Standards and skills framework

e-skills National Occupational Standards

Introduction

The e-skills National Occupational Standards (NOS) detail the range of discrete areas of competence needed to describe the diverse job roles in the IT and Telecoms industries, and IT professional jobs in other sectors. The e-skills NOS also include the discrete areas of competence needed by IT users in all sectors of industry. They have been developed in consultation with employers, and are articulated and maintained by e-skills UK on behalf of industry.

NOS provide a common industry-recognised reference framework that can be used for a variety of training and development purposes, for example writing and reviewing job descriptions, assessing staff or developing training programmes such as Apprenticeships.

NOS also underpin Vocational Qualifications - ie, National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs) in England and Wales and the Scottish Vocational Qualifications (SVQs) in Scotland.

NOS documentation

The e-skills NOS, NVQ/SVQ qualification structures and assessment strategies can be downloaded in hard copy from this section for IT Professionals, for Telecoms and for IT Users (ITQ). The standards can also be viewed interactively and downloaded as individual Areas of Competence from our standards website at http://nos.e-skills.com.  

NOS review

The NOS and Qualification Structure for Information and Communication Technologies and Contact Centres were approved on 24 February 04. The NOS and Qualification Structure for IT Users were approved on 16 November 03. 

NB - We have just carried out a review of the standards and qualifications, and the new documentation is now available from the IT Users (ITQ) - 2009 page.

If you have any questions or issues you would like to discuss, please contact qualifications@e-skills.com.

Last modified: 21 Apr 2009