Demonstrating the minimum core in the Level 4 Certificate in Education and Training (CET)
What is the minimum core in the Level 4 Certificate in Education and Training?
In the Level 4 Certificate in Education and Training (CET) the minimum core is the term used for functional skills and although as a trainer we need to help to develop our learners’ functional skills, the focus within the Level 4 Certificate in Education and Training (CET) is about our own skills in literacy, language, numeracy, and ICT. The minimum core may seem repetitive however you need to demonstrate your skills in the four mandatory units of the Level 4 Certificate in Education and Training (CET) and quite often these will overlap in each unit so its advantageous to find unique examples for each of planning, delivering training, assessing learners, and using resources. The purpose of the minimum core is that you need to have basic skills to be able to develop your learners.
Key aims for the Level 4 Certificate in Education and Training
The key aims of the minimum core in the Level 4 Certificate in Education and Training (CET) is to establish the expected minimum of Level 2 in literacy, language numeracy and ICT for teachers. You don’t need to hold qualifications in these, but you must be at the standard. If were anything like me and didn’t apply yourself at school, this may be reflected in your grades but as we get older and more mature, we recognise the importance in these subjects. If you don’t already hold Level 2 in the minimum core elements, you can take exam only routes to qualifications, but it is not needed to get your Level 4 Certificate in Education and Training (CET) certificate.
By improving our learners’ functional skills, we are preparing them better for employment. There is not one job out there that does not depend on literacy, language, numeracy, and ICT. If you can think of one, I would love to hear it.
By developing these skills, it will enable you to teach your subject better. When I’m teaching the Level 4 Certificate in Education and Training (CET) my literacy skills affect my ability to create handouts and materials which are error free and demonstrate professionalism, language skills to communicate with my learners, numeracy skills to calculate timings in my session plans and calculate the cost of resources. And ICT skills to write blogs, create handouts, send emails, and create eLearning materials. We use these skills in the Level 4 Certificate in Education and Training (CET) far more than we know.
How do we demonstrate these skills? Literacy is about reading, writing, spelling, grammar, punctuation, and syntax. Syntax is the way that you structure sentences. Language skills can be demonstrated within speaking, listening, discussions and role plays and interviews. Numeracy is about calculations, interpretations, evaluations, and measurements whilst ICT is anything to do with technology such as online apps, eLearning, Microsoft Office programmes, phones, interactive whiteboards anything that is technology.
You need to demonstrate each of the skills during the planning, delivering, and assessing stages and within your resources. Let’s start with planning, we will create lesson plans and schemes of work. You will need to do this for the Level 4 Certificate in Education and Training (CET) as its part of an assessment. You will determine timings of your activities; you will determine how many lessons your programme will take. You may create individual learning plans, complete inductions with your learners, give clear instructions on joining the course. You are best advised to use ICT to create your session plans so that you can make adjustments to your programmes when you need to. This is planning covered.
Delivering training in the Level 4 Certificate in Education and Training
When delivering training, we will complete paperwork and course admin, we will review work, we will write on the whiteboard, we will discuss tasks and activities that we want our learners to do. We will subconsciously determine how long we have left in our sessions to ensure we remain on course to complete all activities, when putting individuals into groups, we are likely to use maths to split them into equal groups or determine how long we activities will take depending on group numbers. Most will use PowerPoint to deliver sessions or incorporate phones into sessions. I use my phone for a calculator (yes, I’m cheating) and as a timer.
When assessing, I will read the qualification requirements and I will check my learner’s literacy skills and give them developmental feedback. I will time my assessments to ensure we can complete them within the allocated timeframe. I may also calculate learners scores and pass rates, funding rates. Before I introduced technology to calculate literacy and numeracy assessments, I used to count scores to determine the levels of support our learners needed. I am likely to track learner progress on ICT systems. Potentially may use paper to start with but I’ll definitely need to upload them on the computer.
Lastly, we will look at resources. Literacy is easy, we will check our handouts or our PowerPoints to check to see if they are free from errors and make sense. I do recommend that you get someone to proofread but the requirements are that you do this yourself. Language skills can include discussing with learners their individual needs and then creating resources based on the results.
Numeracy is simple, it might take me an hour to create a certain resource, if you calculate your wage, how much does it cost the business? Now look at creating resources for an entire qualification like the Level 4 Certificate in Education and Training (CET) and its going to add up. You may even calculate how many learners you have and how many handouts do you need to print. ICT again is straight forward as you should create your resources using ICT. PowerPoints, handouts, posters can easily be distributed via email or uploaded to your eLearning platform.
