Employability Award
The Employability Award, has been developed by SQA, and is designed to help young people prepare for work. It will also help implement Glasgow’s Strategic Volunteering Framework by helping young volunteers achieve a qualification that will enhance their employability.
QUALIFICATION BACKGROUND
The Employability Award is derived from a number of Scottish Government initiatives designed to enhance employability skills and recognise a learner’s achievements/skills.
The government defines employability as ‘the combination of factors and processes which enable people to progress towards or get into employment, to stay in employment and move on in the workplace.’
The Award also responds to the Scottish Executive Report, A Curriculum for Excellence (2004) which called for ‘more skills-for-work options for young people to help them progress into further qualifications and work’.
For many learners, especially those in the ‘more choices, more chances’ or NEET (not in employment, education or training) group, some qualifications may be too rigid and long in duration. So to overcome that problem, this Award consists of ‘bite-sized’ Units based on smaller amounts of learning. This should make it easier for learners to achieve and to gain recognition for their achievements.
The employability award will help young people to recognise the skills and attributes they have already gained and how these can be transferred to the workplace.
AIMS OF THE AWARD – The aims of the award are:
- To build the confidence that learners have about their ability to gain employment.
- To develop skills and attitudes necessary for them to seek, gain and sustain employment.
- To help them to understand the consequences of actions they take, or have taken, on their ability to seek, gain and sustain employment.
- To promote a positive and realistic approach to employment.
- To let people identify, and reflect on, achievements, skills and attributes from their previous and current experience which will help them to gain employment.
- To allow learners to develop appropriate job seeking skills which will enable people to access employment.
TARGET GROUP
The Award is targeted at young people who are keen to move into employment. Members of the target group can be in school, college or training programmes. Alternatively it can include unemployed young people not in any mainstream programme. This could include young volunteers who could use their volunteering experience as a vehicle to help them achieve the award.
Whilst the target group has been identified as young people, we do believe there is scope for some older people to benefit from undertaking this qualification.
AWARD STRUCTURE
This award structure is made up of two mandatory units and one optional unit.
The mandatory units aim to help prepare candidates for employment. These units are:
Preparing for Employment: First Steps
Building Own Employability Skills
The optional units focus on the work environment and the behaviours needed to sustain employment. The candidate can choose one of the following two units:
Responsibilities of Employment
Dealing with Work Situations
There is no specific time restriction and the guide duration for completing the award is 40 hours.
Click here to access the Employability Resources page — Please note the page requires a password to access the resources.
