The country’s main provider of Certificate of Professional Competence (CPC) for Transport Managers (Level 3) syllabus and examinations – OCR – is to stop offering the qualification.
It will not accept new candidates after the March 2021 examination.
The final opportunity for new candidates is March 2021, and re-sits only will be offered on three more occasions until December 2021.
It means that the only routes to obtaining the qualification – mandatory for all nominated transport managers on freight and passenger Operator Licences (O-Licences) – will be the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILT) and City & Guilds (freight only).
In a statement OCR (Oxford, Cambridge and RSA) says: “After reviewing our strategy in the coming years, we’ve decided not to continue to offer qualifications in the transport sector.
“We will not redevelop our existing CPC qualifications and we intend to withdraw from offering any CPC qualifications after December 2021.”
“We’ve taken this difficult decision because we are focusing our core activity on providing qualifications for 14 to 19 learners in schools, sixth forms and FE colleges.”
“We will accept new candidates up to and including March 2021.”
It will offer five further opportunities for exams tests before the qualification is withdrawn. These are planned to take place in December 2020, March 2021, June 2021, September 2021 and December 2021.
This means new candidates taking CPC tests in December 2020 will have up to four re-sit opportunities, and new candidates in March 2021 will have a further three re-sit opportunities.
The OCR route to the qualification enables independent trainers to offer face-to-face or distance learning, with candidates being entered into exams held every three months.
Exams are held at independent trainers’ sites, and monitored by OCR.
