#PFEW22: Home Secretary needs to realise that the police degree programme is not workable

19 May 2022

The Home Secretary needs to realise that the police degree programme is not workable and that it needs an urgent review, a Surrey Fed rep has said following Priti Patel’s speech at the PFEW annual conference.

Ryan Soper, a Surrey Police specialist neighbourhood officer who became a Fed rep last year, said: “The Home Secretary mentioned some points around the PCDA [police constable degree apprenticeship] entry route, and she suggested that it was a brilliant programme that was working very well.

“All the work that I’ve done with the Fed so far has all been with PCDA students who are constantly coming to me basically telling me that they can’t find the time to do the coursework.

“It’s having an impact on their social life, it’s having an impact on their family lives. We’ve got officers who are 19 or 20 years old and are still living at home, who are struggling to keep the workload at bay, and that’s before you even start to talk to officers who have young families or have other responsibilities or caring commitments outside of the job.

“The Home Secretary made the point that we need to professionalise the police service. There’s no illusion that we need to continue to push for professionalism in policing, but it insinuated that we’re not a professional police service as it stands.

“My opinion of it is that the PCDA is not a workable programme and, unfortunately, I think it’s going to get to the point that we’re going to end up pushing officers into either leaving the job or, worse, there’ll be a mental health crisis.

“I think she completely mis-read the room on that point and I think, while she states that she’s met officers who are on the programme, I think unfortunately she’s had a bit of a white-washed view to that.

If you walk into a police station and find a PCDA student at random and honestly ask them, ‘Do you think PCDA works?’, I can say without a shadow of a doubt, 99% of them would say, ‘It does not work, it’s not a workable programme’. They’re doing a full-time degree with a full-time job.

“They’ve been treated by colleges as students, and then they’re also being asked to keep up the demands of a job like policing, where we’re managing risks and the lives of members of the public every day. Then having to go home and write an essay on a situation that they’re wholly unqualified to comment on.

“It doesn’t make any sense. We need to be teaching them the practical skills that are required for policing, tutoring around that and focusing on that side of things, rather than these weird assignments that don’t really have a huge bearing on what policing is today.

“Nobody is saying that we get rid of the PCDA and there isn’t a place for it, but it needs an urgent review to look at how it can be used most effectively, so that we don’t end up with another massive issue in a few years’ time where we’ve got half our workforce off with stress.”