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MULTIPLE DE-UP
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• The Certificate of Professional Competence exam is often scorned as a multiplechoice memory test having little bearing on the tough business problems which operators actually face.
Nonetheless every haulage operation must employ at least one CPC holder — and few in the industry seem able to devise anything better. Most say the exam, established from a European Community directive 16 years ago, is the only practical way of maintaining standards.
As a syllabus, it is quick and easy to teach. People who know nothing about haulage can, after a week, recite rules on rest period requirements for doublemanned trucks and the formula to calculate the liquidity of a firm.
It is five-day intensive courses, run by companies such as EP Training of Esher or Dale of Milton Keynes, which are usually the most successful, with pass rates of over 90%. Other home-study packages over three months may still have pass rates of up to 75%.
But are these courses, with a jumble of facts, figures, rules and regulations, enough to prepare people for a career as a haulier? Many, including leading figures in the Royal Society of Arts (which adminsters the CPC system) and several of its specialist teachers, say they are not.
Last April, Janet Davidson, RSA assistant director, called the CPC a "Mickey Mouse memory test" and "one of the pottiest things I have been involved in", at a seminar in Hinkley to brief teachers on latest developments in the industry (CM 21 April 1988). When she said it should be scrapped and replaced with vocational assessment she was backed by many teachers who said other problems stemmed from students having to cope with 72 hours' teaching in 12 weeks as well as a daily job, with no automatic time off.
There are 250 centres offering CPC courses, and around 50 correspondence packages are available. All students sit a core syllabus followed by modules split into passenger or freight, domestic or international topics. They must pass both parts by scoring at least 75%.
Candidate pass rates in 1988 for the core exam varied between 53 and 67%. There are four sittings, in March, June, October and December. Domestic pass rates were between 52 and 70%, with over 17,000 sitting the exam. Of the 3,000 who sat the international freight test, between 48 and 63% passed.
This means that up to 10,300 operators became qualified to enter the gliomestic industry last year, although the figures are complicated by the fact that many may have been repeating the exam or may have passed the freight test but failed the core syllabus.
Feelings towards the CPC are mixed, even among those who teach it. Although many claim high success rates, few are entirely happy with it. At the Hinkley seminar last year less than a third of the 40 lecturers present held a CPC themselves.
BEST OF A BAD JOB
Eddie Pargeter of EP Training Services says teaching the CPC involves "making the best of a bad job". He suggests that instead of a single CPC for all operators, there should be various levels of competence, depending on size of fleet. He says the small operator is less concerned with the details of social legislation (employing the disabled, rest facilities for workers) but needs to know more about vehicle costings which, he claims, is "the basis of all business."
Although it is hard to pass, it is a memory test, he says, and students know what questions will be asked. Britain would do well to follow the Irish example of a tougher entry which has a pass rate of only 48%, he suggests. "Everybody jokes about the Irish syllabus, but it's much tougher than ours."
Pargeter says that out of 200 applicants on his intensive study courses, 95% pass. Pass rates for the home study method are 85%, and half of those who do no preparation at all, but use EP's facilities to sit the exam, pass.
John Debruin, of National Training, lidworth, Hampshire, which puts 500 candidates through the CPC each year, says it is "far too easy to get a CPC in this country". New operators should be made far more aware of the implications of going into business, he says, which could be done with long-term seminars.
Although the written exam is a necessity, students should be told how to obtain business, he says. "You often get Joe Bloggs, who's been a driver and thinks he'd like to try running a business. He thinks he'll just pick up work from the guy down the road and the back of Commercial Motor."
David Platt of Dale Auto Training and Transport, who had only two failures out of 400 entrants last year, agrees.
He says most students will become owner-operators and they need the CPC business information, but he says there should be even more emphasis on the financial aspects. The section they find most difficult is law, with its regulations for maternity rights and toilet facilities, he reports.
Some training centres are happy with the CPC, however. Beatrice Petrie, adminstration manager of Commercial Transport Training in Leighton Buzzard, claims a 75% success rate for the national freight exam, and says that she finds "no problem" with the format, "although there are loopholes for unscrupulous organisations".
Some large transport companies, such as BRS, run CPC courses based on training programmes for their own employees. Dave Tarbuck of BRS Midlands says modules, which are backed up by handouts from the Road Transport Industry Training Board, aim to reach a higher standard than that needed just to pass the exam. An average of 80 candidates go through the CPC at its Birmingham offices each year.
Jeff Handley, a transport manager in south London, passed his national freight CPC first time three years ago. He says the exam is "basically a memory test with four possible answers to each question — one of which is obviously wrong and one or two which might be right. Once you've passed the CPC you tend to forget large chunks of it, but you do retain at least half. I've heard people criticise it as a Mickey Mouse memory test, but how else do you judge entry into the profession on a national scale?" he asks.
The Department of Transport says the format of the CPC is not designed to equip operators for the profession after one exam. Instead, it says: "It is to see that applicants have a general knowledge — after that it's a steady learning curve. It's the entry exam for the profession. Otherwise it's like saying if you have A-level biology you're going to become a brain surgeon."
IMPROVING THE CPC
At the Hinkley seminar Davidson, who has now retired, put forward several proposals for improving the CPC and making it a more accurate reflection of professional competence. These included: 0 A longer teaching period with work experience, or simulated work experience, and a bigger committment from employers to provide time off for CPC entrants.
0 Scrapping the multiple-choice exam. Every operator has books of regulations and knowing where to look is as important as remembering facts in an exam.
Other delegates talked of ambiguous questions, questions where more than one answer appeared to be correct, and questions on subjects not in the syllabus.
Some countries, such as Belgium and Ireland, already run exams which are regarded as tougher than the UK's. The European Commission is reviewing the CPC to harmonise entry-to-the-profession qualifications across the Community. 0 by Murdo Morrison