NCRQ student

mikew88

I was wondering if anyone on here had heard of NCRQ and their current legal dispute with IOSH? Last year I enrolled on a H&S Diploma course, provided by NCRQ, but they have recently disappeared off the face of the earth and no longer provide this course. Their website is no longer active, and there has been limited information available for the students who are currently studying this course. The course was £2500, and it looks like there is no plan for another course provider to take on the students that were previously studying with NCRQ. I have no idea where to go, or who to approach, to either get my £2500 refunded or to find out if another company will take on the students from NCRQ. Any advice would be really helpful. Thanks. 

Lomast

Have you started the course yet? My understanding was that AIM (the awarding body) were trying to organise alternative training, have you spoken to them? 
I suspect though that you are likely to have to pay another training provider to complete the training. Whether you can reclaim any money will depend on what happened with NCRQ as a legal entity and if they have any assets 

Joinedtoanswerasinglepost

Not a lawyer and no special insight, but I’m in a similar position to you. I do have a background in education so I have some limited understanding of the roles and responsibilities of the different players involved.

The Saga:

NCRQ were recently presented with an insurmountable legal bill. Apparently this coincided with a period where they have invested heavily in a new course. Basically, they suddenly and catastrophically ran out of money and stopped trading straight away.

Administrators have been appointed and you should expect to hear from them. They will be divvying up whatever remaining assets the company has to pay its debts off (presumably including us). I’m expecting pennies on the pound, if anything. It will take a while.

AIM are the Ofqual regulated awarding body who authorise the awards that were offered (it’s their rubber stamp that makes it a ‘real’ certificate). The courses were developed by NCRQ and they were the only people ever authorised by AIM to run them. AIM themselves do not (and cannot) deliver these courses.

The guys who ran NCRQ set up a sister company called Hatten. They initially offered to take over the learner registrations with the expectation that they would be able to easily register as a new AIM centre and be approved to offer the same qualifications that NCRQ offered.

Unfortunately, AIM refused to allow Hatten to register with them to deliver these courses. Hatten have now also disappeared from the internet. AIM have apparently been in talks with other education providers who have been interested in offering these qualifications. But AIM have recently released a statement saying that no providers were able to ‘progress through the centre reognition process’. Basically, not only NCRQ, but also the qualifications they offered are dead and may stay dead.

Possible Money Back Options (in no particular order):

Make a Section 75 claim if you paid for some (£100+) or all of your training on a credit card. It may not be a factor but when I put my claim in I made it clear that what I had bought was a package of “regulated training, assessment and certification”. This was to try and protect myself against claims that by getting X number of months through the self-taught textbook, I had therefore received part of the product.

If you paid via PayPal (can’t actually remember if this was an option), you could see if you are eligible for their buyer protection scheme.

If you paid any other way, you could approach the payment provider to ask if there is anything you can do or if you are covered by any refund or guarantee policies they offer. I don’t know of any schemes other than the above but it’s worth a shot.

Register yourself as a creditor with the administrator to try and get a share of any remaining assets (likely to amount to no more than two quid and a conker). You may have to do this alongside any other options you take.

Where to Complete Your Training

The NCRQ qualifications are functionally dead at the time of writing. They do not exist and you cannot study them anywhere. If you have submitted everything to NCRQ and completed all your work, but have not heard from AIM, it is possible that you were not correctly registered for the qualification. Get in contact with them. They may be able to help.

AIM may be able to issue a smaller award if you are part-way through a qualification (e.g. it is possible -but not certain- that if you have completed a unit of your Diploma, that you may be eligible to claim a smaller Certificate as long as you have satisfied all of the requirements of the smaller regulated award. I do not know if they will offer this but I believe it is technically possible.)

For most of us, we’ll be looking at buying a new course from a new provider. There is no equivalent to the L6 Certificate that I know of and if this is what you were on, I don’t have an alternative. The only qualifications at undergraduate level seem to be full 750+ hour diplomas.

The two comparable qualifications to the NCRQ diploma are the NEBOSH Diploma and the L6 NVQ in Occupational Safety and Health. (Comparable in the sense of being regulated qualifications of the same size and level which lead to MIIRSM or GradIOSH). The two qualifications are set out differently and there are lots of articles out there comparing them.

Unlike the NCRQ diploma, you will find multiple training organisations who are able to offer these. There is no system that I am aware of for funding students of failed training organisations. I am talking about going to them as a new customer and paying the advertised price. You can shop around and find a provider who you like. There are different balances of support/resources/facilities/cost and you can choose what suits.

The training provider may, at their discretion, be able to offer Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) so that you can apply some of your previous work to the new qualification. Because these alternatives are not carbon-copies of the NCRQ diploma, it will not be guaranteed, simple, or neat. You may feel like you’re being asked to repeat some work and/or it may take months for your new provider to come to a decision.

My hope is that with a large number of people desperate to complete their studies, a provider decides to do the work up-front and then offers fast-tracks through the RPL process for NCRQ students. I don’t know of any organisation that has done that yet.

There are lots of unregulated courses available which may suit a few people, but probably aren’t right for most. Be sure that’s what you want before buying, because they will not lead to IOSH membership or opportunities for higher study. They are often (but not always) cheaper than regulated courses. ‘Unregulated’ means that they are accredited/authorised/rubber-stamped by either the training provider themselves or by some other entity who is not an actual awarding organisation. Some of them look and sound a lot lot like ‘real’ qualifications offered by 'real' awarding organisations so make sure you know what you’re buying.

They are usually not set up to be scams, but sometimes learners sign up to a course thinking that they will get a nationally recognised qualification and are very put-out when they don’t. Forget all the weird terminology you hear (‘recognised’, ‘accredited’, ‘licenced’ etc.), the big distinction in education is whether a course is Ofqual Regulated or not. A training provider should be able to give you a simple yes/no answer if you ask. Do not rely on the course name. Anyone can sell a ‘Level 6 Diploma in Health and Safety’ - the terminology is not protected. (The exception to this is courses accredited by a University in which case you should ask whether it is ‘credit bearing’ or not.)

Apology

That was obnoxiously long, but I hope it is useful to some people: Either people on the NCRQ diploma, or people with insomnia who can print it off and read it before bed.

Good luck.

molerat

Make a Section 75 claim if you paid for some (£100+) or all of your training on a credit card.

To correct that point, you can make a S75 claim for the whole amount if you paid 1p on a credit card

Joinedtoanswerasinglepost

molerat said:

Make a Section 75 claim if you paid for some (£100+) or all of your training on a credit card.

To correct that point, you can make a S75 claim for the whole amount if you paid 1p on a credit card

Good to know. Thanks for pointing that out.