Chair's Reaction: Not all police officers need degrees

2 November 2022

Not all police officers need degrees and practical skills are often more useful for the job, the Chair of Kent Police Federation has said.

Neil Mennie was speaking as 16 Police and Crime Commissioners – including Kent PCC Matthew Scott – asked the Home Secretary to drop the blanket requirement for all officers to have a degree. They said that recruits from the military, Special Constables and older career-changers were being put off from joining, at a time when forces in England and Wales need to recruit an extra 20,000 officers.

The Police Constable Degree Apprenticeship (PCDA) means that student officers are training in frontline skills at the same time as studying for a policing degree, which has left officers stressed and put pressure on teams when new officers are in the classroom. Neil said that the mix of officers should better represent the communities they police.

Neil said: “Colleagues with degrees say that it wasn’t overly useful when they undertook their policing career and still isn’t. That isn’t to say it can be helpful in some roles and career journeys, but any decent police force should truly represent the society it polices.

“There are a number of trades and other roles where the skillset would really help policing and add to a healthy mixed economy of officers. It's hard to see what was wrong with policing and the mix we had that required this change in the first place.

“One might speculate that the raising of this issue is more to do with the fact that reaching recruitment targets and tying in financial penalties is causing some difficulties across the board.”

He added: “A large chunk of policing remains ‘practical’, requiring extensive practical training. I am not sure that after a road crash or a burglary the public will be overly concerned about the attending officer having a degree or not. In either scenario they want a capable and well-trained officer. Ultimately policing should make room for both those with and without a degree.”