Certificate in Education (Lifelong Learning)

This is a full-time pre-service teacher training course leading to a Level 5 Certificate in Education – a professional qualification for teaching in the Lifelong Learning Sector which includes Further Education colleges, Sixth Form, adult education and a wide range of other training and educational settings.
With a high level of tutor support and strong relationship with our validating partner Huddersfield University, York College is a great place to train to be a teacher. This course is ideal if you are wishing to teach in the post-compulsory sector. The course is designed and managed in partnership with the University of Huddersfield. Tutors are dedicated and highly experienced, with vast knowledge stemming from their own experiences as teachers, as well as working within their vocational or academic specialist areas, offering a high number of contact hours for personal tutoring and academic support. After completion of the Certificate in Education you can follow this up with a further professional award – QTLS. Placements on the course are rich and varied and develop your skills in a range of environments, helping you to gain masses of real teaching experience.

Much of the course is focused on practical teaching. Through your placement, you gain experience of learning and teaching alongside other professionals, with support from tutors and your mentor. Practical experience allows you to gain competence in planning teaching and learning, and in working with learners both in formal classrooms and in student-centred learning situations, such as drop-in study centres. For the full-time pre-service Certificate in Education, successful candidates will complete a teaching placement at York College. This placement will be a minimum of 100 hours of teaching, which is needed to complete the qualification. During the course you undertake project work, such as developing new course materials. Academic work includes critically examining creativity in teaching, subject specialist related studies, quality assurance and professional issues. Modules also allow you to explore areas of interest. Each module is assessed by to assignments which are a mix of extended essays and the completion of two teaching portfolios.

On successful completion of the full course you will be awarded a Level 5 Certificate in Education. As a qualified teacher there are opportunities for teaching your subject area in a wide range of settings. Credit points for each module may be used to progress to higher level courses such as a BA in Education.

Formative assessment

Throughout the course, formative assessment takes place in a variety of forms and contexts. These include:

The initial assessment process
Group discussions, literature reviews and case studies
Academic writing exercises
Teaching observations
Presentations and microteaching sessions by trainees, individually or in groups
Regular PDP reviews
Drafts of work for summative assessment
Teaching and Observations
Teaching Log

Number of hours
You will need to keep a record of all your teaching in this section to show that you have completed at least 100 hours of teaching by the end of the course.

Most people teach many more than 100 hours throughout the course. You should include the teaching hours for which you have had personal responsibility for the impact on learners (e.g. planning, teaching and learning, learner progress.) These may be drawn from, for example:

Formal classroom-based lessons
Lectures
Seminar
Tutorials
Workshops
Skills lessons
Enrichment activities
The hours you log should not exclusively be one sort of teaching and could include:

Whole class
Small groups
One to one teaching or tutorials
Large groups e.g. lectures