NCTJ to make qualification ‘more relevant to digital age’
The National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) has presented plans to make its qualification more relevant to the digital age, as reported by Journalism.co.uk in December last year.
Senior board members discussed the proposals with current students at the third annual NCTJ Student Council, held at the Guardian‘s Kings Cross offices on Friday.
The day also saw the NCTJ preview a sleek new website which they hope to have online by the end of February.
Chief executive Joanne Butcher outlined a vision to broaden the NCTJ into a converged training body providing a ‘gold standard’ multimedia journalism qualification.
She said: “The core skills remain the same as ever, but the new qualification will have more of an emphasis on multimedia.”
The new qualification, which will be taught from September, will see integration of public affairs and media law examinations and the introduction of broadcasting into the qualification.
Shevon Houston, events and website manager for the NCTJ, previewed the new website for the 43 delegates who attended. She said the “fresh, dynamic, easy to navigate” interface would replace the current cluttered design.
The new site includes a searchable database of accredited courses, as well as a student and trainee login area which people enrolled on NCTJ programmes can use to check exam results and find job vacancies.
There is also a forum for students and trainees to debate issues.
Plans to modify the current industry-benchmark shorthand exam were also discussed.
At present, all candidates must be able to take down 100 words per minute for four minutes with a maximum of 10 errors. But, in order to test candidates’ listening skills, from September they will have to identify a quote within a passage and take it down with perfect accuracy to pass the test.
Ciaran Jones is a trainee journalist at Cardiff University. He keeps a blog on travelling and journalism and you can also follow him on Twitter.
Read more from Journalism.co.uk on the NCTJ student council meeting at this link
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