For any mature students making their way into higher education, it’s important to understand that relevant work experience and academic credit value are used to gain entry. The use of work skills is valuable in the application as some students may have been out of education for some time yet developed disciplines needed in higher education holistically within their career; such skills can include:
Critical thinking
Presentation
Teamwork
Understanding points of view
Alongside this, the relevant work experience can play an important part in the class dynamics, having those who are new to the subject with recent academic skills and those with a career background can help collaboration and understanding more about taking the knowledge and applying this to the workplace. Mature students presenting their application for any higher education institution need to understand the importance of presenting career and life skills within a resume and cover letter.
Admissions teams will still be looking at forms of past education to help entry into a degree programme; if you don’t have anything recent or low in value, there is nothing to worry about because access to foundation years are a viable solution for this. A degree is typically three years and a foundation year plus degree is four, don’t be put off with an extra year as this is supportive towards your achievement and completion. Foundation years have been designed to prepare students for the degree programme and have helped to reduce dropout rates; can you imagine going into a degree programme and writing 2000+ word assignments from day one? No! Neither can we, the stress and workload would be too much which is why the foundation year supports this.
Other alternatives to helping gain access to foundation and degree years are to boost your level 3 credits; credits act as points, within the UK they come in the form of accredited courses through Ofqual qualifications and are something which BRITEthink Academy offers.
When you hear the term “accredited courses” the accreditation can come from many sources/ accreditation bodies. Ofqual, (The Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation) is the UK government department responsible for regulating qualifications, and their providers. Ofqual makes sure that courses and qualifications are of a good standard and that they are fit for purpose (which means they do what they say they will – e.g. get people qualified in subjects like business, social care, IT).
In the UK, Ofqual regular over 200 awarding bodies, some are more well known than others – the likes of Pearson, Cache and NCFE alongside other smaller ones. What you need to know is they all have the same standard as they are “Ofqual regulated.”
It’s the Ofqual regulated qualifications that equal credit value, which then help you to gain access to university or further courses. This is different to the Institute of Apprenticeships and Technical qualifications; as apprenticeships and T-Levels come under a different sector.
So, why is Ofqual important? It’s nationally recognised and standardised. This is why BRITEthink’s accredited courses are Ofqual regulated – we can help to support you and gain access to further college or university courses.
Your BRITEthink Academy advisor team are on hand to help explain this, help you gain level 3 qualifications and access to higher education.