Teaching

[Emma68]

Hi, I did my level 2 beauty therapy 9 years ago now, I have worked in 2 salons and now on my own at home for the last few years. I've got a good little business going with regular clients but am starting to go a little crazy being at home all the time. I've recently just booked myself into a private college to start training for my NVQ3, which I'm really excited about, I start in Jan and will be qualified by June. What really interests me is teaching beauty therapy, I'm 42 and feel it's now or never. Can anyone help me on the next step once i'm level 3 qualified? Do I need to go to college to get a teaching qualification and if so how and where?

Thanks Emma :):)

[hippy-chick]

Yes you will need to do a teaching certificate, I recommend the Cert Ed or PGCE which is generally a year course one day a week.

Their are fast track courses like PTLLS which people refer to as petals. They are designed to prepare for you to train not to actually train. Must be a loophole somewhere along the line though as colleges are churning people out on these 10 week courses and not following them up with the next course which is for actual training and people are training with this one qualification.

I think the PTLLS course has an expiry date where you are supposed to go on the next stage.

you may also want to consider doing assessors qualifications as if you wish to do VTCT or City & Guild training or work in a college you will need to be qualified at assessing, internal verifiying and it would be good to have external verfiying also.

[SJK]

There are two types of qualification, and different levels of the qualification: assessing and teaching.

Assessing is deciding whether a student's work is competent or not. A student has to be competent at all aspects of work to pass their qualification. This sort of qualification is particularly relevant to an NVQ, so you will be able to see this type of work on your level 3 course soon.

The next level up from assessing is verifying. This is managing all aspects of the assessment process and essentially checking whether an assessors work is correct. There is a level up from this - external verification. This is highly specialised and a rare qualification.

The assessor qualification is called the A1. The verifier qualification is called the V1. Each of these qualifications takes about a year to achieve, and you need at least a years assessing experience before you can train as a verifier.

The new teaching qualifications are, in order:

PTTLS, pronounded petals
CTTLS, pronounced kettles
DTTLS, pronounced dettols

These replaced the Cert Ed a couple of years ago. The PGCE does still exist but this qualification is for those who have a degree in their specialised field and is more normally for those who want to teach in a school.

Everybody does the PTTLS course, including assessors. It is a ten week long course and introduces you to lesson planning and the terms used within education.

Teachers would then go on to do either CTTLS or DTTLS. The first is a one year course, the second is a two year course. Both include the PTTLS qualification so you don't need to do that first unless you want to, and I would only recommend this if someone else was paying...

The CTTLS course is for teachers who teach adult students from a training manual and who don’t plan their own lessons. The DTTLS course is more common and is for someone who teaches all age ranges and plans their own lessons. It is certainly the more qualification to hold to make you employable.

There is a deadline to complete your qualifications when you start in the industry and this deadline has been introduced to professionalise the Further Education sector because there were only guidelines before, not rules.
To get into teaching, I would recommend two courses of action. The first is to complete the PTTLS course. You should expect to pay around £400 for this. Any local Further Education college will offer it, and I believe the Guild does too.
The alternative, or you could do this in conjunction with the training, is to contact a local FE college. Send your CV to both the head of the beauty department and the HR office, and tell them you are interested in teaching. Offer to go in on a volunteer basis and help out in the classroom for a few hours a week. This will get you used to the environment and the demands of a teaching career. In my experience, if you are keen and willing to learn you will then be offered some teaching, a little bit at first and then more.

[hippy-chick]

So what happens to the people that have completed ptlls and don't go on to do any further training?

[SJK]

So what happens to the people that have completed ptlls and don't go on to do any further training?

If they were working as an assessor, had the A1 qualification, and completed the CPD requirements, that would be fine.

An FE college certainly couldn't continue to employ them if they had to intent to complete either CTTLS or DTTLS.

I'm afraid PTTLS is simply a means to something else really. You complete the course AND something else as a means to do what you want to do.

[pazzy]

My biggest regret is not doing my assessors award when I had the chance - It was while I was doing my 7307 in 1995 - Dohhhhhhh!

Now it will be twice as hard as I have to find students I think. Anyone else know?

[SJK]

You do have to find students, but to be honest, colleges are so desperate for assessors, that if you wrote to your nearest FE college and said "I want to do my A1 award with a view to working for you as an assessor" they'd probably bite your hand off, mentor you, and give you the candidates you need. The only thing they probably wouldn't do is pay for the course...

[pazzy]

Thanks SJK - I may just do that - I might give my nearest a ring just to see what the state of play is.

x

[Emma68]

Thanks guys, for taking the time to reply, very helpful.
Emma x