NVQ was a very strange set up. On the one hand it gave a very worthwhile tax break to those paying every penny towards a career best suited to their personality and talents. On the other hand, to satisfy the Government agency or whatever that the scheme was worthy of a tax refund it had to follow the scheme established for apprentices or even non apprentices working on a shop floor in an engineering factory.This assumed that those responsible for the training of the 'Wannabees'on the factory floor had no idea how to train or instruct. Thus, in an environment where training and testing is of the highest standard - i.e. flying training - suddenly to qualify for the tax break a system best suited to apprentice training was superimposed. The results were hilarous and I kept pinching myself that I was not living in 'cloud cuckoo land' Under the scheme a student was supposed to 'drive' his own instruction. He could ,in theory walk up to an assessor in the corridor and say 'I am ready to be tested on the VOR'.'Get lost' was the answer- 'I will test you in the next progress test'. As a result only lip service was paid to the scheme and it became a paper exercise of meaningless signatures for the various elements. The crunch came in persuading the 'Airlines' to send their people on 'Assessor courses' etc so that they could test the final 2 elements 'f' and 'g'in Customer Care and Flight Safety - I think. Few did as there was no commercial advantage to to do so. Thus the 4 who achieved the Air Transport multi crew NVG were either very persuasive or very determined. What did they get? Well, the equivalent to a degree, supposedly recognisably throughout the land should they change their job and move away from flying. I say bring it back but let us- the trainers determine how the assessment and awarding is conducted - not some model based on an engineering factory. Wannabees deserve some tax breaks - write to your MP - NOW