Degrees do not necessarily make good police officers

POLICE officers do not need university degrees to do an effective job, the Chairman of Essex Police Federation has said.

Plans proposed by the College of Policing in November said that all new police officers in England and Wales could require a university-level qualification in future. There is no service-wide minimum qualification for new police officers, but the college says the job is now of “degree-level complexity”.

It is consulting on the plans, which if approved could run as a pilot in 2017 and be fully adopted by 2019.

But Mr Smith said the proposals would have a damaging effect on diversity.

“Estimates state that soon around 50% of the population will have degrees,” he said. “That means we can only choose from 50% of the population to be police officers. Well that’s not how we police. We’re the community policing the community, and we should be able to choose from across the community if they’re the right people to be police officers.”

He said the prohibitive cost of a university degree would deny policing as a career to people from low and middle-income backgrounds.

He added: “Do I think that you need a degree to be a police officer? No. Does a degree make you a good police officer? No it doesn’t.”

Steve White, chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales, described the idea that only those with a degree be eligible to join as “barmy”. He added entry to the police service must not be restricted to those who can afford to study for a degree.

Mr White said: “There is a danger of marginalising and excluding good quality candidates from all communities, effectively limiting the pool of candidates available. The biggest risk is we end up with a service that doesn’t represents the community it serves because of unnecessary restrictions like this.

Mr White also said: “The suggestion was insulting to the vast number of officers without a degree who are currently performing their complex and sensitive roles exceptionally well.”