Training & qualifications – Approach
The SIA approach to licensing Security Guarding
The competences which have been chosen following full consultation with industry stakeholders cover the generic workplace activities of a security guard. The training specification does not include specific activities such as retail security, CCTV operation, dog handling etc. Additional competences may be included in industry qualifications to cover specific activities but the SIA will only require the generic core competencies for licensing.
The SIA will allow for additional sectors within the licensable activity of security guarding, where groups of security personnel engage in distinctly different activities and therefore require different core competencies.
Other groups that have similar core competencies to the main security guarding sector will be licensed as security guards. Therefore, all job activities which share common core competencies will be treated as one sector. This means that learning objectives will be the same or similar although they may have different training routes.
National Occupational Standards
In approving standards, the SIA has taken into consideration the existing National Occupational Standards (NOS). NOS are statements of competence that describe workplace activities and are written to measure performance outcomes. NOS must be considered as one of the most important factors in future planning. The primary function of the standards is as a key component for qualifications. However, they have many other uses including training design, training needs analysis, appraisals, recruitment, skills matrices, skills benchmarking and quality assurance. Throughout the training specification, when and where applicable, the training and qualification has been mapped against existing NOS.