November 2016 marks the beginning of the SRA’s new approach to continuing competence. Solicitors in England and Wales are no longer required to track 16 hours of continued education. Rather, they are required to reflect on their practice and identify personal learning and development needs.
These regulatory changes require a shift in the way learning is recorded in your learning management system. VinciWorks has recently updated its Learning Management System to accommodate these changes.
From recording diverse learning methods to producing completion certificates, the VinciWorks system makes adapting to the changes to CPD simple and straightforward. The changes are only relevant to law firms operating in England and Wales, and do not affect historical data in the system.
New Accreditation: SRA Continuing Competence
The SRA’s new standard for tracking continuing competence is denoted in our system as the ‘SRA Continuing Competence’ accreditation. All staff who were marked as ‘UK CPD’ have been transitioned to the new accreditation automatically. This information can be accessed by administrators in the LMS by selecting ‘Configure’ > ‘Manage Accreditations’.
Unticking the accreditation box ‘SRA Continuing Competence’ will enable you to deactivate the Continuing Competence module for the entire firm.
New Completion Certificates
The completion certificates for solicitors in England and Wales have been updated to reflect the new SRA requirements.
How to Manage the Continuing Competence Module
If your firm licenses the Continuing Competence Module all users that were marked as accredited for ‘UK CPD’ now have access to the module and are now marked as accredited ‘SRA Continuing Competence’. Below are some of the typical learning management actions administrators can take in the system.
1. Click on a user’s profile on the ‘List ALL Users’ page
Once you click a profile icon, a pop-up will appear. Here you can tick or untick the accreditation ‘SRA Continuing Competence’ in order to give or revoke access to the module.
2. Click the ‘Competency’ tab to view a user’s full record
Administrators have access to the full Continuing Competence Module record of every user. This is a useful tool for conducting performance reviews with solicitors and helping a solicitor create a learning plan.
This tab also gives you access to multiple years of records.
4. Use the ‘Competency’ view to manage firm-wide learning
On the ‘List All Users’ page, you can use the ‘Competency’ view to analyse all learning related to continuing competence at a glance. Alternatively, you can right-click on the columns to show or hide columns as appropriate.
User Access to the Continuing Competence Module
Users with access to the Continuing Competence Module can view and update those records by clicking on the ‘View My Competency” button at the top of the screen.
Mapping VinciWorks’ Courses to the SRA’s Continuing Competence
VinciWorks has created a guide that maps all of our courses to competencies in the SRA’s Competence Statement. Learn more.
What if I Need my Old CPD Records?
If you need to refer back to old CPD records, there is no need to worry. All records are saved and can be referred back to by finding the user and selecting the profile icon. This will bring up the user’s profile. The tab in the upper left hand corner has an option to view ‘Enrolled Courses’. Selecting that tab will list the users who completed the course. You can view the certificate for that course by clicking the book icon on the right side. This record will be kept in the system and can be referred back to whenever needed.
If a user needs to view previous Continuing Competence records, they can access them by hovering over the desired year in the Continuing Competence Module.
