THE Chairman of Essex Police Federation has said forcing budding Bobbies to have a degree before they join the job is \u201ccompletely wrong\u201d and risks ruling out half the country from becoming officers.<\/p>\n
Mark Smith told EssexFedFocus: \u201cWe\u2019re taking certain areas of the community out of the equation from becoming police officers.\u201d\u00a0He added: \u201cI thought we were supposed to be the community policing the community.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/em><\/p>\n The College of Policing has launched a consultation on \u201cacademic recognition\u201d for officers, including a new qualifications framework for the service to underpin professional development.<\/p>\n In the future, new recruits could potentially be asked to complete a higher level apprenticeship or degree-level qualification or conversion while training, while other officers will be able to gain academic recognition for their existing skills, training and practical experience.<\/p>\n Mr Smith (pictured) said: \u201cI have previously been on the radio with College CEO Alex Marshall who said to me at one point: \u2018Fifty per cent of the country now have degrees\u2019. So what we\u2019re saying is half of the country can\u2019t be police officers.<\/p>\n \u201cWhere does middle England – the people who don\u2019t get the benefits and the people who aren\u2019t rich enough to afford things – where do they find the money to be able to do this training and to do these degrees?<\/p>\n \u201cI think we\u2019re taking out a part of the community, and a very important part of the community, because you\u2019ll find that the people they they\u2019re now turning their back on are the people that tend to have good family values, good values about life, and these are the people that they wish to shut out.\u201d<\/p>\n What about an \u2018on the job\u2019 accreditation for officers?<\/p>\n Mr Smith added: \u201cI think that\u2019s okay if it\u2019s not going to cost police officers, if it\u2019s done as part of the job. It gives continuity of standards across the country. But then again, is there going to be a continuity of standards or is it, \u2018We advise you to do this unless the Chief Constable wants to do it a different way\u2019? Because at the moment everything that comes out of the College is just advisory, the Chief Constables make final decisions, so unless there\u2019s a continuity I feel it\u2019s absolutely pointless.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr Smith encouraged members to respond to the consultation. \u201cI think everybody should respond because the College of Policing, if they don\u2019t get responses, they\u2019ll say that people agree with them, and I don\u2019t think they do,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" THE Chairman of Essex Police Federation has said forcing budding Bobbies to have a degree before they join the job is \u201ccompletely wrong\u201d and risks ruling out half the country\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2594,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2658"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2658"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2658\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2660,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2658\/revisions\/2660"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}