UK seafarers: standards of training, certification and watchkeeping review survey report

Overview

The standards of training, certification and watchkeeping (STCW) review survey was launched to initiate engagement with maritime industry stakeholders and serving seafarers regarding the current STCW training requirements and to gather important information in the process to identify any training gaps and opportunities yet to be fully explored.

This survey enables the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) to receive feedback and propositions for change that are valuable to chart the necessary course towards seafarer training modernisation.

It also ensures that the MCA does not miss any chance to deliver impeccable value to our seafarers through the robust training and certification process, fully optimising the services we offer today, while correctly positioning the agency for future technological advancements.

Purpose of survey

The purpose of the survey is to find out from the industry, especially serving seafarers, what can be added, removed or amended to/in the current STCW mandatory training requirements. It is to ensure that seafarers can receive/maintain the level of knowledge, understanding, professional competence and performance standard suitable and relevant to today’s industry and ever improving navigating, engineering and electro-technical equipment needs.

It’s only reasonable for seafarer’s training to be made to reflect the modern nature of the equipment and machineries used at sea.

Findings and recommendations

The pertinent findings, recommendations and suggestions for improvement are highlighted within the individual sections of the survey in concise graphs and bullet points to ensure that the relevant context remains clear.

Within this report there are some suggestions and sections with recommendations from respondents left undiluted to capture the genuine reaction towards those topics.

Conclusion

The overarching insight gained from this survey is that the competency requirements of the current STCW framework are still very relevant as they are. However, changes are necessary for the suggested areas to improve and align them with the overall direction of the maritime industry.

This survey highlights those areas that can be revisited and made fit for today’s modern navigation, engineering, and electro-technical needs. An overwhelming number of respondents thought that specific topics should be taught or covered in a different way during basic training and some other topics should take a reduced importance as they are no longer as relevant to modern navigation.

To properly capture the need for these changes or not, an analysis of answers provided by respondents was completed. These answers were critical to the question of whether the present STCW competency requirements, as is, are still relevant today. The recommendations provided by respondents regarding what could be added, removed or amended to make the STCW competency requirements suitable for modern training needs are included in the subsequent breakdown.