Employability skills in the Level 4 Certificate in Education and Training (CET)
Purpose of Level 4 Certificate in Education and Training
The purpose of the Level 4 Certificate in Education and Training (CET) is to prepare trainee teachers for work. Most learning programmes will as well unless it is for pleasure. That being said, we need to ensure our learners are prepared not only for them to teach but to interview well, get a job and stay in that job for the foreseeable future. For this reason, our courses should help to prepare our learners for work. Yes, we teach them the core components of the course, but we need to development for employability skills, so what is the difference between the two?
Employment skills in the Level 4 Certificate in Education and Training
Employment skills are the basic skills to get the job. Employability skills will enable you progress in that career. In the Level 4 Certificate in Education and Training (CET) we teach you to teach which is employment skill and yet be attempted to improve your teamworking, communication skills and ICT skills to help you maximise your ability in that job.
The train the trainer programmes are quite interesting and in a corporate environment, the best person in a job type is to be the trainer. Likewise in business, if you are good at your job, you become the manager which to some degree makes sense as you know what you are doing so you should be able to show others. But the problem is, not everyone knows how to communicate to maximise transferring that knowledge from the trainer to the learner and maybe we need to motivate our learners to try. This is where employability skills come in, by also teaching these life skills, it makes that transition from employee to trainer or manager much smoother.
Subject specialism in the Level 4 Certificate in Education and Training
Everyone who enrols on the Level 4 Certificate in Education and Training (CET) will have their own subject specialism. This could be health and safety, cooking, construction, hair and beauty and it is more than likely that you have completed a qualification for you to be recognised as competent in that role. This is an employment skill. The employability skills are those that help you to become good team players, leaders and to really enable you to move up that career ladder.
Think about the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. It’s the employment skills that get them in the door but ultimately, it’s the employability skills that get them to the top. The best thing about employability skills is that they are transferable from one industry to another. The benefit to completing the Level 4 Certificate in Education and Training (CET) is that this will be recognised in any industry and can be applied in any role.
Business skills are other examples of employability skills. My trade is a sport but due to being able to have transferable skills in communication and teamwork and leadership had led me to teaching. I have now progressed from teaching to running my own business, but I have developed transferrable skills that will be useful to many businesses such as marketing and sales, SEO, social media, business strategy, websites, leadership, and financial skills. I couldn’t think of any organisation including not-for-profits which would think these skills are not useful.
