National Occupational Standards (NOS)

How do they work? 

The Fish and Shellfish NOS are made up of units that can be mixed amd matched to form an apprenticeship programme, or used as the framework around which to develop your own training materials, programme or bespoke qualifications.

There are four types of units:

  • Occupational knowledge units (OK) – what someone needs to know to do their job competently in their workplace.
  • Occupational skills units (OS) – what someone needs to be able to do in their workplace to be considered competent.
  • Underpinning knowledge units (UK) – a more theoretical body of knowledge that covers a particular (sea)food industry topic.
  • Vocational skills unit (VS) – similar to the OS units, but these vocational units apply to the skills taught and displayed in a training environment.
At Seafish we use the UK units when developing a programme.  If a suitable UK unit doesn’t exist then we’ll use one of the other types of units to inform our programme.  As employers have contributed significantly to these units we can be confident that our work represents the reality of working in a seafood business.

How do they work? 

Each unit is made up of learning outcomes and assessment criteria.  The learning outcome is what the trainee is expected to know or to be able to do after the unit has been delivered.  The assessment criteria is how you would go about checking this.  It’s simple to apply.

The Fish and Shellfish NOS units have been reviewed and updated in 2025 and are on the webpage below.

Fish and Shellfish NOS