ISO 17021:Accreditation for certification body 4

Courtesy: ISO 17021:Accreditation for certification body

The United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) is the sole national accreditation body recognised by the British government to assess the competence of organisations that provide certification, testing, inspection and calibration services. It evaluates these conformity assessment bodies and then accredits them where they are found to meet relevant internationally specified standards.

Now, more than ever, is an important time to understand the value of and how certifications can play a vital role in addressing re-employment, re-deployment, and re-education challenges that workers face in the current labor market as workers, companies, and educators are all scrambling to make changes that help them adjust to rapidly changing labor markets during and post-pandemic. To address this, Workcred collaborated with Corporation for a Skilled Workforce and George Washington Institute of Public Policy to offer a comprehensive overview of the diverse landscape of certifications through a new report, “Understanding Certifications.” The report discusses variations among certifications across numerous dimensions to make it easier to differentiate among the diversity of certifications in the marketplace. It covers their purpose, who awards them, what value they provide, how they align with educational pathways, and ways to assess quality. Determining the quality of a certification is critical. Yet, it is often assessed subjectively because certification earners, issuers, consumers, and endorsers value characteristics of certifications differently and because these stakeholders look for different evidence of quality and use different methods for assuring quality. Many people do not know that accreditation, the most prevalent quality assurance mechanism in education, is also used for certifications. We estimate that approximately 10 percent of the certification bodies in the United States are accredited by a third party such as the ANSI National Accreditation Board (ANAB) or National Commission for Certifying Agencies (NCCA) to meet a nationally-recognized standard. The certification body accreditation process consists of a third-party review that assures the public, employers, and government that the competencies identified