This week, the College of Policing published results from their evidence-gathering on the effectiveness of the new officer entry routes. The extensive surveying of new joiners shows widespread disapproval of the (expensive) university inputs to courses and praise for local inputs.
Buried deep in the report however is clear evidence from the College themselves confirming the majority of serving officers’ strongly held convictions over the implementation of this controversial overhaul of police officer recruitment:
The police degree entry routes are less relevant to officers than their IPLDP predecessor.
In this ‘stats corner’ interest piece blog, I assess share the key results from the College’s new 135-page report into their extensive surveying of new recruits of the last four years. The new vs. old results and evidence disclosed are truly illuminating…
A Fundamental Transformation in New Officer Training
“All of the entry routes now available into policing represent a fundamental transformation in police constable training.” – Jo Noakes, College Director of Leadership and Workforce Development
After a multi-year transition period and what the College themselves describe as “the most significant workforce reform in policing for decades”, four new initial police training methods have now replaced the Initial Police Learning and Development Programme (IPLDP) introduced in 2006. This initiative to change police recruitment formed part of the Police Education and Qualifications Framework (PEQF).
As at 1 April 2024, the College are now discarding the academic-sounding PEQF terminology, and instead now calling them ‘police constable entry routes’ (PCER). The PCERs now available and licensed to forces are:
- Police constable degree apprenticeship (PCDA).
- Degree holder entry programme (DHEP).
- Professional policing degree (PPD) holder entry route.
- Police constable entry programme (PCEP).
The first three are degree level, in that people either need to have a degree, or must study for one during probation. The PCEP requires no involvement of higher education. For a brief overview of these entry routes, the College publish summary information on each on their website. Here’s a visual overview for convenience:
The College remind us of some key rationale of the PEQF in this new tranche of survey results:
“The PEQF routes… put more focus on critical thinking, problem-solving and evidence-based policing skills than the IPLDP route.”
This ‘fundamental transformation’ didn’t come without a backlash from rank and file officers and their senior leaders. To recap on the critique of the degree holder entry routes, particularly the PCDA, the following are the main five concerns:
- Increased pressure on officers’ work-life balance to complete academic assignments.
- Too much focus on academia in assessments and lack of support to succeed.
- Reduced quality / relevance to the role of the university-led inputs.
- Increased abstraction of new officers in their first few years.
- Potential for discrimination and exclusion of certain cohorts of society.
The latter PCEP option was introduced by the College, following widespread criticism and kickback against the ‘police degree’ focused entry routes. In summary, IPLDP was given a slight tweak with IPLDP+, which has now morphed into this new PCEP scheme. Despite this method not being degree-level, the College state it has a ‘common core curriculum’ and ‘same learning outcomes’ as the others.
Key Survey Findings and Highlights
The College portray an overwhelmingly positive picture of the PEQF and their new entry routes in their press release and curated ‘Summary of Key Findings’ on the first few pages of the report. Readers with no professional curiosity may stop there, grateful for having their thinking done for them and saving them time from having to bother reading the report for themselves.
However, a more objective and independent assessment of these dozens of pages of survey results would be unlikely to mirror the College’s interpretation. To summarise with a more objective take on the key findings, here are the 8 key highlights I would draw from the published results:
- IPLDP candidates reported their training as being more relevant to the role than their PEQF counterparts. This included reporting it giving them greater confidence, knowledge, skills, and preparation for the role. However, entry routes generally only attained agreement from around 1/2 to 2/3 of candidates on these factors, suggesting vast room for improvement, especially with the new entry routes already lagging behind IPLDP.
- Overall, around 80% of officer joiners were satisfied with their role as an officer, regardless of their entry route. However, the decline from years 1 to 4 within IPLDP seem more pronounced than the PCDA and DHEP. There’s no real difference between the sexes, but a slightly lower satisfaction of minority ethnic officers.
- Less than 10% of joiners intend to leave within the next 3 years. An overwhelming majority wish to stay until retirement. Again, this is consistent across entry routes. The top four reasons cited for those who aren’t intending to stay until retirement were salary/benefits, job impact on wellbeing, lack of work-life balance, and heavy workloads.
- Most officers were satisfied with the inputs of force trainers. The PEQF entry route officers indicated a higher satisfaction with this (77%) vs. their IPLDP counterparts (61%). This was consistent between the sexes, though minority ethnic candidates on the PEQF schemes seemed a little less satisfied than their white counterparts.
- Conversely, there was widespread dissatisfaction with the training inputs from university staff (applicable only to the PEQF schemes). Only 25% were satisfied with this, with both sexes and ethnicity groups in agreement. Likewise, only 1 in 6 people agreed that the forces and universities collaborated effectively. IPLDP officers were slightly more satisfied overall with their training. This may help explain the gap seen in point 5 above, whereby the contrasting quality of the in-force vs. university inputs may have caused the PEQF candidates to score the in-force training higher (as they were comparing it against something poor).
- Between 80-90% of officers were satisfied with support from tutor constables, force trainers, and line managers, with broad consistency across entry routes and the Sex / Race demographics. However, only around 40% of the PCDA/DHEP candidates felt supported by university staff.
- 2/3 of PEQF officers reported always or often using rest days to complete university study or ‘off the job learning’. Additionally, a quarter had their ‘protected learning time’ cancelled or postponed in the last three months. Very few of these degree candidates felt the amount of study time required was clearly explained.
- All entry routes scored similarly (just above middling) on measures of mental wellbeing and work-life balance.
If you care about initial training of officers, did you look at the evidence for yourself? If so, what else did you notice about the findings?
Let’s now dive in on that apparent step backwards in point 1, in terms of the relevance of PCDA and DHEP to the officers’ role when compared to the IPLDP scheme…
Officers Declare IPLDP as Most Relevant to their Role
This new survey is particularly important in any evaluation of the effectiveness of the PEQF, since it gathers what the officers on the scheme themselves say about it and how it affects them and their job. There’s often no better evidence in policing than that directly from the horse’s mouth! So let’s explore what officers said with some more detailed results…
The officer joiners at varying stages of their career (between their first and fourth year since joining) were asked to rate the relevance of the training to their role. In addition, they were asked about the skills and knowledge it gave them to confidently perform their officer duties. Here’s what they report:
You will notice that the IPLDP scheme comes out better than the PEQF routes (DHEP and PCDA) on every single metric, especially for its relevance to the role.
There are many in policing who have long argued that “IPLDP ain’t broke so don’t fix it”. They have often even declared police degree routes a step backwards in terms of equipping officers for the practical role of policing. Through publication of these extensive (and representative) survey results, the College just provided them with clear quantitative evidence they were right all along. The difference in bar lengths demonstrates that step backwards.
The College are at pains to caveat this particular section with a disclaimer, along the lines of ‘fear not, our new entry routes have now been improved, so we wouldn’t expect IPLDP to look better anymore’…
“All of the survey findings reflect experiences of entry routes before they have undergone changes that are being introduced through the national police constable entry route optimisation programme.”
More Results: Clothing the Emperor?
In their careful preamble to this new, comprehensive review of IPLDP vs the police degree routes, the College draw their own conclusions about the scheme, claiming both successes and failures…
“Throughout the period that the PEQF entry routes have operated, there is evidence of them succeeding, as well as important areas for improvement.”
Indeed, in my prior assessment of a range of evidence clear already in 2022, there were a range of pros and cons to the PEQF. But some of the claimed successes in the College’s interpretation of the results suggests a little ‘rose-tinted’ bias to say the least. For example, they state:
“Additional questions in the 2023 survey… indicate a greater awareness and understanding, among PEQF entry route respondents, of evidence based policing and problem-solving approaches to policing.”
So let’s look at the results and assess these claimed successes around the new survey questions on evidence-based policing (EBP) and problem solving. Not least because as we have noted, these are key parts of the PEQF rationale emphasised by the College.
First, while fewer IPLDP candidates state an awareness and understanding of EBP compared to the degree route candidates, the difference is clearly negligible by any objective standards. And the more important aspects of whether they are using EBP and keeping up to date in the day job are actually higher in the IPLDP group. A classic example of the “theory / academia versus practice” debate maybe!
This seems contrary to the conclusion drawn by the College and suggests cherry-picking of results to feature in the ‘summary of key findings’. As a critical thinking exercise, this is a good reminder ‘the devil is in the detail’ and the value of ‘doing your own research’, rather than merely trusting in interpretations of results done by others. Or (ironically) to put it another way… review the evidence base for yourself.
So what of problem solving? Are problem-solving approaches truly better among the new DHEP and PCDA cohorts as the College claim, implicitly then justifying the move away from IPLDP? Again, it’s a no. This too appears to be at best, a cherry-picked conclusion to put in the summary findings.
See for yourself the detail of the responses given below. Would you draw such a bold conclusion to support your favoured schemes? Are the differences ‘significant’ in any material way?
As for critical thinking, that metric is high across IPLDP, PCDA and DHEP alike. Again, there’s no material differences between the schemes apparent to a fair-minded observer. I’ll leave you to explore the details for yourself and compare claimed successes against the results.
Statistically Significant, Yet Insignificant…
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” – Mark Twain
Critical thinking is an essential skill I encourage all aspiring police leaders to develop. And as you progress to more senior ranks, understanding performance management to inform your decision making is also important. On this note and for your CPD, I’m reliably informed that the Understanding/Improving Performance courses run by Malcolm Hibbard at the Police Foundation provide a solid grounding for analysts and police leaders alike.
When you explore these differences for yourself, objective observers may conclude the College have been a little too enthusiastic in claiming success, based on a select number of areas where they found ‘statistical significance’.
I shared the College report with a business analyst friend, who deals with stats as a day job. In the following section therefore, I have tried to summarise some of the more technical critique of the published analysis and what I learned from this, including links for further reading should this ‘deeper dive’ into the stats interest you!
Firstly, the College extensively emphasise any differences which are ‘statistically significant’. But finding a statistically significant difference says nothing as to the scale of the difference or whether it matters. It simply means that the difference you found is unlikely to have been down to mere chance or randomness.
Whether the difference is truly significant in everyday language and as most people understand the term, is a different matter. I.e. significant in English means “sufficiently great or important to be worthy of attention” or “having a particular meaning; indicative of something”. That’s where the ‘Effect Size’ comes in for those who make more rounded statistical considerations before drawing out conclusions from a bunch of data.
So as we’ve seen in the prior section, things can be ‘statistically significant’, yet practically the same.
In their 135-page report, the College share copious tables of the ‘p-values’ and their effect sizes, across various factors. Rather than having to resort to ‘P-hacking‘ to find headline-grabbing results, the analytically-minded and data-savvy out there might notice the overwhelming proportion of ‘statistically significant’ differences calculated across numerous factors.
And not just statistically significant, but to an extreme degree with p-values most often being <0.001. That’s 99.9% confidence the difference wasn’t just mere chance. For context, scientific research only aspires to p<0.05 or p<0.01. This seems highly unusual, in that almost everything came out as extremely statistically-significant, despite the small or marginal differences across most of these questions.
For example, see just one of the many tables reproduced below comparing factors for differences between groups in mental wellbeing. The College concluded “PCDA candidates had the highest mental wellbeing”.
Yet looking at those exact mental wellbeing scores on the reported scale from 7 (lowest possible) to 35 (highest possible) tells a different story. What would your conclusion be from this exact same data? Anything worthy of attention or indicative of any difference there to justify a significant decision or expenditure?
When going through the detailed results, you’ll notice the College performs a similar statistical ‘sleight of hand’ with its claims about the PEQF on other factors too. For example, “PCDA candidates were most satisfied with the role”, “PCDA candidates are more likely to stay”, and “PCDA candidates were more satisfied with their tutor constables”.
Should you wish to inspect the practical differences for yourself and how far the police degree schemes are ‘significantly ahead’, be sure to come prepared with a magnifying glass! Now let’s come up again from these brain-frazzling detailed stats and look more strategically to the future of police degrees…
Where Next for Police Degrees and Entry Routes?
Of course, the view of officers themselves who are actually doing the training and experiencing the new scheme, isn’t the totality of evidence for or against it. As the College explains in their report:
“The new recruits survey has been providing valuable data on how the PEQF entry routes are being perceived and experienced by new joiners… The evidence complements insight from a wide range of sources, including College quality assurance processes, stakeholder feedback, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services and Ofsted inspections.”
But what better evidence is there for a new officer joiner scheme than hearing it direct from the officers themselves, based on their lived experiences? Clearly, this should carry massive weight when reviewing the future.
So where next for the College when the evidence-base has placed them in a quandary, having previously battled to mandate forces as Nike may phrase it, to ‘just do it’? Well, it seems the solution has already been implemented from their perspective last year, summarised here by their Director Jo Noakes:
“Forces now have the flexibility to attract talented and diverse applicants through the four available police constable entry routes.”
To explain this: By creating PCEP as a fourth, non-degree entry route, this has relieved the pressure and placated the most vociferous officers at all levels. Those officers and forces who concluded from their own observations, that the more academic and extended degree and apprenticeship routes were unfit for purpose, are no longer mandated to implement the controversial university-supported degrees.
Then by amending and morphing the old IPLDP curriculum and criteria into the PCEP scheme, the college appear to have found a happy medium with forces. There’s an entry route which the College are satisfied has the same learning as other schemes, but it requires no degree and may feel like an ‘IPLDP+’ to forces.
The College have also tried to portray ‘brighter news’ from these results by saying the new schemes are even better now, because they are being “optimised”…
“The 2023 new recruits survey results are for the PEQF entry routes and not optimised PCER programmes… The expectation is that revised local entry route programmes will deliver more effective, streamlined learning and benefits to work-life balance.” – College
Further, the College appear to admit not everything is as rosy as it could be, even by their own standards. A less forceful approach than taken previously seems to be on the cards, albeit there’s zero chance of going back to IPLDP. To be fair, they do indicate they will now take on board all these longstanding (and now well-evidenced) criticisms to make what they’ve implemented better…
“A national optimisation programme is currently underway to embed learning about how to make the routes work most effectively.” – Jo Noakes
What Will Police Forces Do Next?
Regardless of what the College say and/or forecast, what will forces actually do?
Many forces dislike the more expensive, higher abstraction, and other downsides of the less relevant degree entry routes like PCDA. Those forces now have an escape plan. They can now adjust their proportion of intakes for recruits who don’t hold a degree, encouraging more to join via the PCEP route.
Indeed, it seems many are already doing this and voting with their feet. For example, Thames Valley Police currently light up the PCEP option like a beacon for interested folk on their recruitment website:
“PCEP: This is our main Police Officer entry route, with 80% of new joiners choosing this 2-year programme to start their career.”
Beyond TVP and as shown on the national ‘join the police’ website, the non-degree PCEP route is also popular among forces currently recruiting new officers.
Forces can now choose to largely disregard the degree qualifications, possibly emboldened by the fact the College themselves state PCEP has the same learning outcomes as the others. So why would forces bother spending all that time and money trying to claw back some of their ‘Apprenticeship Levy’, when universities charge forces around £20,000 per candidate in any case? (Yes, the recoup of the £££ Apprenticeship Levy, was a key ‘carrot’ dangled to incentivise PCDA uptake in forces, even though it all gets paid to the university partner.)
Does this signal the silent death of police degrees? Or at least push them into a more ‘supplementary’ pigeonhole in the police recruitment stakes?
Either way, if I were a university provider of police degree qualifications to forces or individuals, I’d be concerned.
Kind Regards, Steve
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