The curriculum for the new police degree apprenticeship has been published.
The police constable degree apprenticeship programme was revealed last week by the College of Policing, and is designed to provide the next generation of police officers with the skills required of a modern constable.
According to the College of Policing, the degree apprenticeship curriculum provides a “comprehensive, modern and up-to-date coverage of areas of knowledge, skills and professional approaches that have been identified as critical to...21st century policing”.
Alongside traditional areas of policing, such as public protection, criminology and crime prevention, the course will feature up-to-date areas of modern policing such as digital policing. The course will last up to three years and successful apprentices will complete a degree in professional policing practice.
‘A degree founded in professional practice’
The apprenticeship is one of three new routes forming part of the Policing Education Qualifications Framework (PEQF) - alongside routes for undergraduates and graduates - which aims to ensure all new police officers hold a degree-level qualification.
Ray Clare, head of curriculum and qualifications at the College of Policing - the body that supports the education and development of police officers - says the police constable degree apprenticeship is designed to ground apprentices in the practical realities of policing.
Mr Clare said: “There’s sometimes a conception that a degree in anything is quite theoretical, that it’s very classroom-based and perhaps divorced from professional reality.
“One of the key drivers in the PEQF...is that this is very, very much an education founded upon professional practice, so the police apprentice is engaged in operational policing alongside...their professional education, and the two are married together. That’s our vision of it - it’s actually an educational degree founded in professional practice.”
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