Recognized Security Training or Not?

Kia Ora,

Been a while. Have been focusing on another business venture with a view to including true security in the much bigger goal.

This first blog back was going to be about an on going issue within the New Zealand security industry, but another has come to light that is connected & also on going.

That is the issue of Security Training in New Zealand.

News out yesterday was of a unrecognized Security Training establishment. That is unrecognized by the powers that be although it appears at first glance they were using the information to teach from two recognized training groups.

We know that because it was shown(TVNZ)they were using paper work from those two groups based on NZQA requirements.

All well & good but is this non recognized training establishment any worse than those who are recognized? On the face of it it would appear so.

Probably not though & it is very likely they could actually be better.

The students of this course were paying $100's of dollars to attend & get a certificate.

Recognized courses cost $1000's usually requiring a student loan.

However most of those coming out of recognized courses actually don't know anything about security.

They, certainly in the case of people of a Christchurch course, don't know the basics like Trespass Act or how to carryout a bed down(in fact they have never heard of one. They think it is a lock down which is something quite different).

Then there are the training establishments which are alleged to have taught whole courses of students who could never of been in the industry at present time because of criminal records or even having come straight from Jail.

So essentially the training establishments are committing fraud, just as the unrecognized group appear to be doing, if this is true. What is worse is it is government sanctioned fraud & they have been informed several times by a number of people that it is going on.

A properly run course could teach the students more in three weeks than what they get in over a year's teaching now.

It seems to be more about getting the students in debt, providing cash flow to the training establishments but not providing the correct training.

A few of us were joking that the only thing the course in Christchurch seemed to teach was how not to do security, how to sleep on the job & how to use drugs or argue that drug use is Ok in the Security Industry.

Working around these people tends to drag your own standards down after a while & so I am quite happy to focus in other areas, recharge the batteries & observe to see if there is any improvement in the industry.

That is not to say I won't carry out security work, just right now the focus will be elsewhere.

There are some training establishments though that do aim to improve standards. I was aware of one in Auckland that was operating to give the much higher standard of SIA(British Security Industry) & was run by people with extremely high standards.

Another is in the process of getting of the ground I believe in Rotorua again with trainers focussed on international standards & extremely high standards in comparison that offered around New Zealand in general at present.

When looking at the information available on this issue, it was noted it was very thin & not widely reported. In fact most of the stories were about fake qualifications immigrants were trying to use to get jobs in New Zealand.

Seems though NZQA does a better job of looking into people coming from overseas than what training organizations are actually offering or providing here.

I know that if I or others applied overseas for work & relied on where we did our courses we would also be seen as probably trying to offer fake qualifications.

The reason been is though that training establishment is still in operation, allegedly prior to change of owners a few years ago all our documentaion was lost. So there is no record of us having ever been there.

We do have our NZQA records. Though when people see the standard coming out now from most NZQA recognized training providers, they wouldn't even consider us based on that. But they would consider me based on my much higher standard of NZ military training.

The poor security training though leads into the subject of the next blog. The subject that has been raised before & has been bubbling away since an incident last year.

http://www.foxhoundsecurity.co.nz