Careers help - mature student - teaching

allofushere

I'm 47, have a BA Hons degree 2:2 in 3D Design (from 1988) and would love to get into teaching in some sort or another. At present I am an administrator but hold no formal qualifications for this. I want to do a level 4 Business Admin course with the OU, then a teaching qualification (maybe PTLLS?) and an assessor A1 certificate. If I obtain a 24+ Adult Learning Loan for the first course ie the NVQ Level 4, would I be able to then apply for further loans to do the teaching and assessor qualifications? Or is it a one off deal? In which case, would I be better trying for a full time PGCE?

lulu650

What would your PGCE enable you to teach? I'm not clear from your post what exactly you want to teach but as you have a degree in 3D Design I assume it would be either IT and/or DT? Or perhaps you are looking at teaching Business Studies in a Further Education College?

You should really talk to the OU about this in the first instance who will give you all the teaching info you need.

The sooner you can get started on this the better given your age. I was part of a mature group of students in a BEd group and we all had experience of working in schools either paid or voluntary in order to have the edge at interviews.

National_Careers_Service

Hi allofushere,

Have you had a look at the information on the 24+ Advanced Learning Loans section of the .gov.uk site yet?

Part 2 of this section explains a bit more about taking out more than one loan.

These type of loans are for level 3 and level 4 courses which are not covered by other forms of funding.

Depending on the eligibility criteria, I wonder if you might be eligible for the Professional and Career Development Loan for some of your courses. Have a look and see what you think.

Going back to the 24+ Advanced Learning Loans, you can only take out one loan out at a time. For example, an electrical engineering programme may involve studying a level 3 certificate in electrical installation and a level 4 diploma in electrical engineering at the same time, but only one would be funded.

You can have up to a maximum of 4 loans in total, but you can’t take out another loan to repeat the same type of course at the same level.

Here is an example: if you’d taken out a loan to do a Level 3 Certificate in Plumbing, you could then take out a second loan to do a Level 4 Certificate in Tiling, which would be a different type of qualification. However, having undertaken a Level 3 Certificate in Plumbing you could not take out a second loan to do a Level 3 Certificate in Construction, as it would be a second loan for the same type and level of course.

It might be a good idea to find out more about the level and type of qualification that you’d like to take in the future to help you to work through the eligibility criteria for both loans.

I hope this helps.

Emma