On 4th September NEBOSH launched their new-look General Certificate Courses (both National and International). It was no surprise that the launch coincided with NEBOSH 40th anniversary celebrations. The General Certificate course has been the backbone of NEBOSH’s course offerings for many years and has provided the springboard for thousands of careers into occupational health and safety (OHS) management (including my own; see here). There are various sources of information about the new courses available on the NEBOSH website, such as their news article (see here) and a short video (see here). But the best place to look for detailed information on the relevant course information pages (National here; International here).…
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Q&A on NEBOSH HSE Introduction to Incident Investigation
A collaborative course from NEBOSH and The Health & Safety Executive launching this May. The NEBOSH HSE Introduction to Incident Investigation course is designed to enable learners to be able to carry out solo incident investigations, produce risk control plans, and contribute to team incident investigations for large-scale investigations. The course aims to aid individuals in positively impacting the safety culture in their organisations. Our associate tutor Elizabeth Kenyon has been directly involved in developing content for the course. Elizabeth is passionate about safety and training, and has over 15 years experience of training delivery within the HSE industries. In addition to filming e-Learning content for the course with RRC,…
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Studying as a Distance Learner
If you are reading this blog then there is a good chance that you are an RRC student studying by distance/ e-learning through our Learning Centre. Distance learning is very appealing to both students and employers for various reasons such as the flexibility of the study schedule and the lower costs compared to traditional face-to-face teaching. Inevitable there are downsides. Studying by distance learning can be a rather lonely affair, people often struggle to make a start and stay motivated and sometimes course content can involve difficult or unfamiliar ideas that would be much easier to grasp in a room full of like-minded students with a tutor to help. So…
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It is Not What You’re Asked, it’s The Way That You’re Asked it
It is Not What You’re Asked, it’s The Way That You’re Asked it When did you last sit an exam? For many of us it was years ago – perhaps at school, or university. How did you get on? What did you think of the questions? Too technical? Too long? Wanted too much detail? You thought you knew the subject pretty well, but were stumped by some of the things being asked? It’s pretty scary even remembering it, isn’t it? And you may experience it all over again when you face your NEBOSH General Certificate exams. It doesn’t really matter where we are exposed (there’s a good health and safety…
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Identifying Environmental Aspects and Impacts
Identifying Environmental Aspects and Impacts – Race to The Finish Seven years ago I competed in my first marathon it was hard – very hard. As everyone always says, in the last six miles of the race you hit a wall, and a very well built and extremely big wall it was, too! Something that feels very much like the last few miles of a marathon and which causes students a lot of pain is assessing environmental aspects and impacts – as covered in Unit 1, Element 3 of the NEBOSH Diploma in Environmental Management: ‘Control Strategies for Environmental Risk’. Often, when I am delivering courses or marking assignments, I…
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The NEBOSH Unit D Assignment
The NEBOSH Diploma Unit D Assignment Personally, I feel that this is one of the most important parts of the diploma assessment. Whereas the exams test knowledge of the theory, Unit D checks that you can put that theory into practice. Unit D is intended as a formative assignment, so should be completed alongside the other units. Therefore, it is essential that you engage with your tutor at an early stage to ensure that your work is heading in the right direction. In my experience, those who contact their tutor several times as their report develops normally do well, whereas those who don’t bother, or leave it close to the…
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The Diploma Exams
The NEBOSH Diploma Exams ‘Three hours of mental torture’ – this is how one of my students once described the diploma exams. She was wrong – its actually NINE hours! This post gives some advice to help you avoid feeling the same way and dispels some common myths. Those who may have read my previous posts will not be surprised when I say that preparation is the key. Not only must you revise well (see my third post in this series) but you should know basic things like how many questions you need to answer (believe me, some don’t); you can then start to develop your plan of attack. Settling…
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The NEBOSH Certificate Practical Assessment
The NEBOSH Certificate Practical Assessment The final element of the certificate assessment requires the candidate to carry out a workplace inspection and write a short report to management. This is to test that the knowledge gained during the course can be applied in practice. Candidates don’t normally fail this part through want of knowledge; the reason candidates fail is often because they haven’t read the guidance, leading to silly, avoidable errors. RRC has produced comprehensive guidance on how to complete the practical assessment. This is really helpful for distance learners, who do not have the benefit of being able to discuss things with a tutor face-to-face. However, experience has shown…
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NEBOSH Certificate Exams
NEBOSH Certificate Exams In the previous post, I focused on general revision techniques and gave tips on revision. This post is about how to tackle the exams themselves. The first thing to realise about the certificate exams is that they test a breath of knowledge across the syllabus without going into too much depth. The material in your course books will therefore be more than enough to enable you to pass well; failures usually arise through poor preparation and poor exam technique. Let’s start with the basics. The exams are both two hours long. You must answer all 11 questions on each paper. Question 1 is worth 20 marks; the…
