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The Conservation Technician Qualification (CTQ) is a recent development to meet the needs of a group of workers in the cultural heritage field. While following some of the principles underpinning UK National Vocational Qualifications, it is employer-initiated and owned, awarded by a professional institute, and wholly workplace-based. A short trial in 2007-08 with an initial group of five employers and 18 candidates proved highly successful, and the qualification is now being taken forward with further organisations and candidates. Out of necessity the CTQ was developed as a national initiative independent of government education and training bodies, and it raises questions about the flexibility of public qualification systems to respond quickly and efficiently to the needs of small and distinct occupational groupings.

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The [Training for Vocational Rehabilitation Services] TRAVORS projects, supported by the European Union's Lifelong Learning Programme, ran between 2008 and 2012. Their object was to develop training programmes for disability employment practitioners across nine countries based on proven approaches both to vocational rehabilitation and to skills training. The second of the two projects aimed to trial and establish a European practitioner qualification, pitched at Level 5 of the European Qualifications Framework and emphasising skills-based training and workplace assessment. While the trials proved successful, they highlighted a generally poor level of understanding of assessment and certification based on workplace proficiency. The project resulted in a common 'curriculum', a detailed qualification specification and a strengthened set of processes to guide implementation in different countries. However, the qualification can be considered a work-in-progress and wider uptake - sufficient to support sustainable central governance - needs to be achieved if a genuinely international certificate is to emerge.

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The accreditation and registration systems used by professional bodies serve a number of purposes including offering clients a measure of confidence, creating or maintaining a market niche, and raising the profile of the profession. The currently dominant technocratic model of professional accreditation normally places a high value on examining knowledge, with sometimes a secondary assessment of practice. A few UK professional associations are beginning to accept practice-based accreditation, generally as an alternative to their mainstream systems. Conservators and restorers represent a small occupational group in the process of professionalising. A recent project has seen agreement on a practice-based system as the primary route to professional accreditation. This system draws on some of the principles established through UK occupational standards and National Vocational Qualifications, while incorporating modifications to aid clarity, improve the ease and rigour of assessment, and reflect intelligent, reflective practice. The approach used raises some issues and questions about how and on what grounds professional practitioners are accredited, and how occupational standards can be applied and assessed in a professional context.

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The Professional Accreditation of Conservator-Restorers (PACR) is a practice-based accreditation scheme, which draws on some of the principles established in the United Kingdom’s framework of occupational standards and National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs). The emergent success of PACR shows that these principles can be adapted into a professional context and gain credibility within the profession and among its client constituency. PACR also offers experience that might be transferred back into NVQs. The PACR standards are more focused and concise than most occupational standards; they reflect a more holistic view of competence and professionalism than do many occupational standards; and the assessment process aims to examine practice in an integrated, focused and efficient manner. The success of PACR in an area where NVQs have seen little uptake also begs the question of whether it is always appropriate to package competence-based qualifications as NVQs, particularly at the higher levels.

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