Free training with British Gas Energy Trust

GlasweJen

Thanks 50Twuncle for putting me onto this, I thought I'd post my experience with the scheme.

http://elearning.britishgasenergytrust.org.uk/employability-skills/job-seeker-skills/employability-skills-complete-programme

I struggled to get the web page to work for me so contacted BG through live chat and a representative emailed me out a form to complete which I returned with a photo of my PIP award. My learning account was set up on the same day and the courses all went live a few hours later which was excellent.

I chose to do the microsoft excel course and the wordpress course as I've always fancied starting a blog but I lack the technical skills.

The excel course is all videos, they are broken down into a few minute long chunks and they are fairly easy to follow. I am quite good with excel so only really chose this to do the advanced section but I've done a few of the basic videos just to check for content and they are good.

The main draw back of the scheme to me is that although BG are funding the training they don't fund the exams at the end though you can pay £10 per course to get a certificate. I'm not clear on whether or not the certificate will state that that course is equivalent to X qualification. Also there is no funding for the software so if you don't have the microsoft office suite the course might not get you very far. There are also no training exercises with the course though you can find some on google. I've been working on examples I found on a youtube video.

The training is free though which is brilliant, I think if you are interested in any of their courses you should definitely go for it.

The scheme will end when a certain number of people sign up so if you're interested it's something you should do sooner rather than later. You have a year to complete your courses and the training comes with a CV builder as well so when you're done and signed off you can use the CV builder to help with marketing yourself a bit better though some of the courses would be suited for people going into self employment.

time2getalife

GLASWEGEN thank you for this link. I had a look and some good courses on there, unfortunately I had difficulty signing up too, I had a chat message and was instructed to email sales directly which I have done.
I just wanted to let you know that when I was trying to sign up I pressed different things and in one section it states to get your certificates for free to quote British gas in all correspondence.

GlasweJen

time2getalife wrote: »

GLASWEGEN thank you for this link. I had a look and some good courses on there, unfortunately I had difficulty signing up too, I had a chat message and was instructed to email sales directly which I have done.
I just wanted to let you know that when I was trying to sign up I pressed different things and in one section it states to get your certificates for free to quote British gas in all correspondence.

Thanks for that, I'll keep that in mind and let you know how I get on when I'm done.

Once I emailed the team I was set up within a few hours, I think it's deliberately difficult as they want to see a benefits letter before they sign you up.

time2getalife

I emailed them last night and got a reply this morning the form to fill in and proof of benefits . I have sent everything back to them so just got to wait for them to let me know how to start my chosen courses. Thank you for posting the link as otherwise I wouldn't have known anything about it .

GlasweJen

50Twuncle posted about it on the employment board, thought it would be helpful here.