Reviewing our education and training requirements for student opticians and our CET and revalidation requirements is a core element of our strategy.
Our Education Strategic Review is well under way with strong stakeholder support for our direction of travel. The recent education ‘concepts and principle’ consultation showed backing for new standards for education providers and learning outcomes that meet the need for an evolving sector.
Our Continuing Education and Training Review has also started. This explores new principles by which we can support optometrists and dispensing opticians to keep their skills up to date. It also considers how our requirements could change to ensure registrants are continuing to develop their skills and knowledge as well as maintaining the fundamentals of practice.
These two elements of our regulatory framework enable us to ensure those joining our register are sufficiently trained and safe to practise and those already on our register remain safe and competent, however the optical sector adapts and changes.
We are now ready to test some firm proposals for new education and CET requirements and look forward to hearing stakeholder views on our proposals and how they could be implemented.
We will be launching the consultation in June 2018 and a key part will involve seeking feedback on changes to Continuing Education and Training (CET) to allow practitioners to more easily direct their continuing professional development to their current and future practice.
This is your chance to share your views on our proposals and we are keen for a wider range of stakeholders to get involved. Visit the GOC consultation hub at consultation.optical.org.
