Centre of Vocational Excellence

Centre of Vocational Excellence (CoVE) is a status given to departments in further education colleges (and some third party training companies) in England. It is intended as a kind of quality guarantee for vocational teaching, and is awarded by the Learning and Skills Council if the teaching is of good quality and if the department offers a range of courses with progression routes up to Level 3 or beyond in the National Qualifications Framework.

There currently 400 departments given the CoVE status.

While Centres of Vocational Excellence are common place, as an organizational model, the Centre of Excellence model has been extended as one of Mintzberg and his 5 organizational forms. While difficult to implement without a blended rate model, if using a blended salary model implementations of the centre of excellence model are easier to implement.

External links

• Learning and Skills Council - CoVE scheme
• List of colleges with CoVE status (Microsoft Excel spreadsheet)