Advice on Level 2 Beauty college course & work experience hours required

[nonnynoo]

Hi,

Im currently doing level 2 beauty at my local college. I am a mature student and have really enjoyed the course.

Part of the course was to do 8 Saturdays in the college salon and also 24 hours work experience. The girls that worked in a customer service setting could use that for these hours ie Sainsbury's and Pizza Express to name a couple.

I have done 2 of the Saturdays and half the work experience hours when I assisted at some college events.

I did a separate gel course, got myself insured etc and started working doing gels and have added spray tans and eyebrows with separate paid courses. As I had got busy the head said they may accept those hours for the above. I got together a portfolio inc insurance cert, public liability, photographic evidence, copy of diary and any advertising information. she has since turned round and said it is not acceptable and that its to do with the government as they set it and as I work for myself they wont accept that.

I am getting conflicting advice though as a couple of tutors have advised on the side that this is a new rule from September and this academic year it should still be acceptable. I also spoke to another college about going there for level 3 and they have said the government only require work experience hours for students aged between 16-19.

Im so confused, I just wondered if there was anyone that could point me in the right direction.

Thank you in advance for any help offered x

 

[AcidPerm]

Sounds like you've being given conflicting advice by the tutors. There are two separate issues here.

Work Experience towards a level 2 qualification:
Your qualification framework has got nothing to do with the government.
Look at your logbook. Who is the awarding body? City & Guilds or VCTC? They are the ones that set the requirements for the course and award the qualification in conjunction with the college. The college will have external examiners visiting from the awarding body who monitor the teaching and assessments to ensure that standards across the country at various colleges are roughly the same.
Both have websites for more information. You could contact the awarding body directly and ask for some informal advice and see what they recommend. I think VCTC are often a little more helpful in this respect. Also, ask to speak to the person responsible for signing off the paperwork at your college. Usually called the Course Director or similar title. That's the person who decides what is acceptable in terms of meeting the assessment criteria. Hopefully, they will give you a definitive answer regarding the work experience. For what it's worth, I'm surprised that working at Pizza Express is prioritised over actual Beauty experience but I guess it's because the students 'work' is being managed by someone else whereas with the beauty services, you are not directly supervised by anyone.

Level 3:

The government set the rules for funding specific courses targeting different groups of learners. So the college recruit students who meet this criteria in order to claim back funding from the government. Usually, younger students who haven't completed a post 16 qualification are targeted for these types of funds. It sounds like there is an additional minimum hours work experience requirement linked to the funding perhaps.

However, each college will decide what courses to run and what fees to charge for adult students so the fees will vary from college to college. Usually, the NVQ courses require students to have a salon placement but that's often not necessary for the VRQ course.

So, you need to find out which colleges local to you will be running a level 3 course and then find out what their eligibility criteria for places is (age restrictions, placements etc.) and what fees they will be charging. Then you can compare what's on offer.

Hope that helps?