Accredited Qualifications in South Africa is very expensive to complete. You need make sure that you will get what was sold to you, before you pay for them.

To put it very simply, the training provider must adhere to the following:

• The academy must be accredited with a specific authority, such as Milites Dei Academy (registered as Milites Dei Security Services) is accredited with SASSETA (Safety and Security Sector Education and Training Authority);
• The academy must issue you with specific Unit Standards and such examples are the Close Protection/Bodyguard/VIP Unit Standards or the Dog Handling Unit Standards;
• Every Unit Standard have an x-amount of credits, such as one of the CPO Unit Standards have 15 credits;
• The 15 Credits mentioned means that the facilitator and student need to spend 150 hours on that one Unit Standard;
• The complete CPO Course with all the Unit Standards has 67 credits in total, meaning that the teaching and learning time must total to 670 hours. That is a lot of hours and let us make an argument of 10 hours are spend per day, it means you as a student need 67 days to complete the full course.
• You as the student must also receive the following documents when participating in an Accredited Unit Standard – (i) Learner Guide, (ii) Portfolio of Evidence, (iii) Summative Assessment/Knowledge Test and (iv) Extra Evidence. In addition, you will be assessed whereby you give practical demonstrations of what you have learned.

When do you know that a training company is cheating with the qualifications that they deliver to you?

• When the training is too few days;
• When the training academy did not give you the (i) Learner Guide, (ii) Portfolio of Evidence, (iii) Summative Assessment/Knowledge Test and (iv) Extra Evidence;
• Most importantly, you the student must in person complete the (i) Learner Guide, (ii) Portfolio of Evidence, (iii) Summative Assessment/Knowledge Test and (iv) Extra Evidence;
• When the training company has whimsy methods of measuring your performance, meaning, they award marks to you that is not exactly the same for each student. Resulting in you failing a subject yet another student pass but you know for a fact that you did exactly the same as that other student or maybe even better.
The pictures in this blog indicate files completed by Milites Dei students and you will notice that a lot of work was put in by each student and therefore the qualification awarded from Milites Dei testifies of quality.

If you study the Unit Standards of the Dog Handling Course you will notice that the total in credits as per the DH1 to DH5 levels totals to 83 credits. The 83 credits total a a total of 830 teaching and learning hours. Thus, you cannot expect a DH quality course to be completed in six (6) weeks. Again, if you spend 10 hours per day on the qualification, you need 83 days to complete the course.

The South African Government explains the following which supports the above-mentioned arguments. (Read more on https://www.gov.za/services/education-and-training-bodies/accreditation-provider-education-and-training ) “All providers of education and training offering full qualifications must be registered with the Department of Education.

The education and training provider has to offer unit standards and/or qualifications that fall within the primary focus area of the ETQA body of the relevant SETA such as http://www.sasseta.org.za or professional body.

Requirements for accreditation:

• The programs (and/or assessments) offered by the education and training provider must culminate in unit standards and/or qualifications registered on the National Qualifications Framework (NQF).
• The curriculum (design, content and learning materials) is aligned to the unit standards and/or qualifications.
• There are suitably qualified staffs (facilitators and registered assessors).
• The learners have access to adequate learning support services.
• The assessment methods and tools used to measure the requirements for the unit standard and/or qualification are fair, valid and reliable, and are used to enhance learning.”

You as the student need quality training and qualifications so that you can be the best person to get employment and not only get that job but be able to outperform anyone else in that specific job and industry.