For our 18th Edition online courses here at the-regs.co.uk and partPtrained.co.uk we currently have 28 City & Guilds exam venues and 7 EAL exam venues – “Covering the whole of the UK, from Exeter to Aberdeen and everywhere in-between!”
Recently, I have noticed that some training centres are dropping City & Guilds altogether and switching over to EAL and that quite a few centres are now offering both. I feel that those who offer both may be doing so in order to build the profile of EAL within their organisation before eventually switching to EAL.
City & Guilds are the most recognisable brand of the exam awarding bodies, especially if you are the same age as me, mainly because they were all that was available at one time.
However, these days EAL are probably the second most familiar and are a qualification awarding body tailored towards industry whose qualifications are equally well recognised throughout the electrical industry by such as the JIB, IET, NICEIC, ECA, Napit, Stroma etc, etc.
Whether it’s City & Guilds or EAL all approved awarding bodies must meet the strict standards and criteria laid out by the governmental body ‘Ofqual’ whose job it is to ensure that all individual qualifications meet the same standards across all the awarding bodies and are a true assessment of student’s ability and understanding regarding any training.
This means that for an individual qualification like the 18th Edition, the Level 3 City & Guilds 2382-18 and the Level 3 EAL 3298/0 are the same award. It’s just a different brand.
In the future I think that it’s quite likely that more training centres will eventually switch to EAL as City & Guilds are becoming too expensive, especially as far as the annual fee charged to the centre is concerned.
This is due to City & Guilds setting a minimum spend for each centre per year which if the centre doesn’t achieve they are billed for the remaining balance, it’s called having your cake and eating it.
This is one of the reasons we went with EAL for our centre here in the North West and why I think that many more will be changing over in the next five years as EAL becomes an even more familiar brand.