Your school days are over, but it’s never too late to learn. The confidence and skills you can gain from taking a course, at any stage of life, could give your career the boost it needs. And they’re just an application form away, so grab your pencil case and get cracking.
A weekend poring over prospectuses, half a day filling out application forms and the next nine months working until 10pm most week nights. How many people would start night school if they knew how much energy it would take?
The simple answer is that the rewards of retraining can be huge. For thousands of people each year, the promise of improving the jobs they’ve got, or making a fresh start in a new field of work, is enough to persuade them to take on the hard graft and unsocial hours that are involved.
Learning new skills, however you do it, can be physically and mentally exhausting, not to mention the dent it can make in your wallet and social life. So before you start that marketing diploma or upholstery course, think carefully about whether your target career really is right for you. Are you enrolling on the best course? How many job opportunities are there in this field? And could you save yourself the money by blagging your way into the job and learning as you go?
Sian Eggert, or career consultancy Eggert & Eggert, recommends that you research your chosen career thoroughly before you begin retraining. To find out what experience and qualifications employers in the field are looking for, search the net, visit your library, and arrange face-to-face meeting with someone who is already doing your dream job.
You can increase your chances of getting a job at the end by heading for careers or sectors where there are skills shortages. Some sectors, such as IT, new media and hospitality, are desperate for skilled workers. University of Warwick research shows that demand for managers, professionals and personal services staff, such as gardeners and housekeepers. Is rising, but the need for factory operators and manual and clerical workers is falling.
You can minimise the amount of retraining you have to do by analysing which transferable skills you already have – such as mathematical ability or organisational skills – which could be important in your chosen career.
Eggert recommends that you visualise changing careers as a square divided into four. Maybe you are in the top left hand corner but you want to get to the bottom right. Instead of making the leap in one go, you could step across to the right corner first and then down to the bottom corner later. For instance, you work in a bar and you’re food at maths, and you want to move into accountancy. Get a job in the finance department of a hostel, and study part-time. At the end of it, you’ll have qualifications plus knowledge of the industry.
If you’re not confident about retraining, the least daunting option might be to try a web-based or distance learning course first, then, if you like it, you can move on to night-school, day-release or full-time education. To find the right course you have to know which type of learning you’d prefer – the Government’s national free helpline Learndirect is the biggest one-stop source of course information [provide hyperlink here]
Choose retraining method which suits your lifestyle and learning style. Think about how you learn best as a child, or visit your company’s training department to ask their opinion on which method would suit you. And always make sure you check out the calibre of a course before you enrol on it. Your local Tec (Training and Enterprise Council) can give you useful advice on choosing training providers. “See what institution is running the course, try to get references and, if they will allow you to, talk to other people who have done the course,” says Eggert.
Distance Learning
For most people the problem with retraining is how it impacts on their lifestyle. Let’s face it, if you do shift work or are a parent, enrolling at night school might not be possible. Distance learning means you can complete all or part of many courses from home. The advantage with it is you can start today, go at your own pace and fit study around your schedule. However, you might miss the human contact and shared experiences of a traditional classroom course.
The most successful example of distance learning is the Open University, ranked 10th among all UK universities for the proportion of its courses rated as excellent. You can study anything from a short course to a PhD, part-time or from home. There are no specific entry requirements for undergraduate courses – in fact more than a third of last year’s graduates didn’t have the A levels normally needed for entry to university.
You use a mix of text books, study guides, audio and video tapes and TV broadcasts, home experiment kits and multi-media materials. Every student has a local tutor, plus seminars and summer schools. You can choose whatever modules you are interested in – whether arts, science or management subjects – notching up a minimum of 360 points to gain a degree. Most students spread their degree over five years or longer, costing about £3,500, but you don’t have to pay if you are on benefit.
Distance learning also includes interactive web-based courses, which are ideal for learning computer skills. A huge selection is available off the internet at reasonable rates, supported by message boards and live on-line teaching sessions. More than 400 such on-line course, covering IT, communications, business, management and literacy, are available from Learndirect.
This public sector initiative doesn’t charge for its courses and there are no entrance requirement, but you do have to register with your local learning centre first, which may charge a small registration fee. There are already about 700 local learning centres around the UK, housed in pubs, shopping centres, sports clubs and libraries.
Night Classes
Night school is good if you enjoy gradual, structured learning’s coal contact and can commit yourself to be free at a certain time on a certain night for the next nine months. However, you may have to wait until the next course starts, often in September, and keeping up the commitment is hard during bust times in your work or personal life.
The Chartered Institute of Marketing, for instance, offers four levels of qualification that you can study via evening classes, weekend courses or distance learning. The foundation certificate in marketing is designed for those with no previous experience in marketing, such as returnees to work. If studied through evening classes, the course is normally run over 12 weeks.
To acquire each of the next three qualifications – the certificate, advanced certificate and postgraduate diploma in marketing – you’ll usually have to take two evening classes a week for nine months.
All in all, this amounts to about 360 hours of study, split between four models, with an exam or coursework assessment at the end of each module. A lot of work.
On the Job
With on-the-job training you don’t have to work weekends and evenings to learn new skills, and you don’t have to pay for the privilege. Some people prefer vocational qualifications such as NVQs (National Vocational Qualifications – SVQs in Scotland) because they’re more practical, with a focus on coursework and portfolio rather than exams. You can miss out certain modules if you’ve already gained those skills through your job, and you can start an open learning course through Learndirect then upgrade it to an NVQ later.
The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority overseas NVQs and awards about 450,000 NVQ certificates every three months. The most popular areas include the service industries (such as tourism, catering and hospitality), engineering, manufacturing and health and social services. You may be able to persuade your boss to sign up for an in-house course or NVQ, or get them to contribute towards your college fees. Two out of three companies claim to support staff in independent study and 55% will give you time off to study, a recent survey by the Confederation of British Industry showed. You’ll have more luck getting support if you stress the business benefits that your extra skills will bring.
Figures from the Industrial Society show that the average UK employer only spends about £400 per head per year on training. Charities and the public sector spend the least, while utilities and IT firms fork out more than £600 per head in training per year.
Gas fitting is a good area to retrain in because there had been a severe skills shortage since British Gas was privatised. According to Ginto the Gas Industry National Training Organisation, only 128 new gas fitters joined the Corgi register in the year to February 2000, when something like 3,000 new entrants were needed.
Full Time
Fewer people now retrain through full-time study because there are more opportunities for flexible, part-time learning, and because going to university or college is becoming more expensive. Most full-time university students have notched up debts of between £10,000 and £20,000 by the time they’ve finished all their years of studying.
If you want to join a profession, such as law or accountancy, full-time educations is undoubtedly the quickest way to get to pre-entry qualifications that you’ll need.
Another opinion is to study part-time, get an intermediate qualification and then go to college full-time for the final year. Many universities offer this option for their modular courses. You can find out about available courses through UCAS, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service, which also publishes a range of books on choosing courses [provide hyperlink].
Development Loans
These are bank loans to help you pay for vocational education or training. You can borrow anything from £300 to £8,000 to cover 80% of your course fees plus all your related expenses, including childcare, travel and disability costs. You’ll have to cover the other 30%, unless you’ve been out of work for more than three months, when you can get a 100% loan, You only start repaying the loan one month after you finish your training, and the Government pays the interest until then.
Individual Learning Accounts
You can get £150 from the Government to go towards retraining if you’re one of the first million people to open an individual learning account (ILA). You have to put it in the first £25 yourself, and the money can go towards vocational courses up to an including A-level or NVQ-level 3 standard.
More than 250,000 people have opened an ILA, which qualifies for a 20% discount on a wide range of courses, and 80% of IT courses. To find out more call the ILA helpline [add contact].