National Occupational Standards in Dance Leadership Launched

DTAP (Dance Training Accreditation Partnership) and Creative & Cultural Skills are delighted to announce the publication of the first National Occupational Standards (NOS) in Dance Leadership. NOS, which can be applied to any profession, are used to define what an individual needs to do, know and understand in order to carry out a particular job, role or function.

The need for recognised professional standards in dance leadership has arisen alongside an exponential increase in dance activity outside formal education over recent years. DTAP developed the NOS over a period of two years, led by the Foundation for Community Dance and a working group of key individuals from across the dance profession. Consultation with a cross-section of organisations representing the breadth of the dance profession took place at a national conference in 2010, and Creative & Cultural Skills have been closely involved throughout.

The NOS will have a range of practical uses to those working as teachers / leaders in dance outside formal education, and those employing them. For example, it is likely that aspects of them can be incorporated into codes of conduct teachers / leaders are required to sign up to by employers and membership organisations; they may be used to inform the content of job descriptions, appraisals and the setting of fee levels by employers; providers of professional development opportunities and further and higher education courses will be able to use them to design training and course programmes.

The NOS will be subject to review and further development roughly every two to three years. The first review, due in 2013, will coincide with the culmination of further work that DTAP and Creative & Cultural Skills intend to undertake into a national benchmarking system for dance qualifications and Continuous Professional Development (CPD). The alignment of this work with the review of the NOS could mean that new NOS are created which enable dance leaders / teachers to identify their level of experience against a nationally-agreed framework.

Pauline Tambling, Joint Chief Executive of Creative & Cultural Skills said 'the painstaking work that has gone into these new NOS in Dance Leadership will have broad reaching benefits. They are an important development that, over time, will help to drive up standards, recognition and capacity in an industry that has seen a huge increase in demand for quality provision.'

The NOS can be downloaded from the link on the left hand column on DTAP's homepage

FAQs on how NOS can be useful to professionals, employers and Continuing Professional Development (CPD) providers can be found on the UK Standards website

Enquiries: contact lisa@communitydance.org.uk or visit www.communitydance.org.uk/cpd

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