New academic year, new career: is now the right time to get qualified?

If you have years of expertise in your field but no formal way to pass that knowledge on, the start of a new academic year is as good a prompt as any to ask yourself: what is actually stopping me?

The timing is better than you think

Many people assume teacher training has to be planned months ahead, with a fixed start date and big blocks of time set aside. With online study, none of that applies.

You can enrol on the L3AET or an assessor course at any point in the year. There is no cohort to catch up with and no intake deadline to miss. You start within 30 days of booking, and you can start the day you enrol.

That said, the start of the academic year is a good time to begin, for one simple reason: motivation. Workplaces pick up pace after the summer, colleagues are back and routines settle. The conditions for regular study are better than they were in July.

Why demand for qualified trainers is growing

Employer expectations around staff training have risen. Regulators and inspectors look more closely at who delivers internal training and what qualifications they hold.

In health and social care, construction, logistics, the public sector and beyond, organisations are asked to show that training is delivered by people qualified to deliver it. The informal arrangement of ‘Sarah used to be a nurse, so she runs the training days’ is less and less enough on its own.

That is good news for experienced professionals. If you have the knowledge and experience, a teaching or assessing qualification is the relatively small step that makes you the person employers need.

What you can realistically achieve by Christmas

The L3AET is 120 hours of Total Qualification Time, of which 48 hours are guided learning. Start in early September, put in around 7 to 8 hours a week around your job and you could finish by mid-December.

Some people go much faster. Rebecca completed her L3AET in 9 days because she needed it quickly. Others take longer, which is fine: you have 365 days of access.

Either way, that is a new line on your CV and a formal qualification to support a job application, a promotion conversation or a move into a new area of work.

How to know if you are ready

You do not need to be an expert teacher to start a teaching qualification. You need to be an expert in something, and most people reading this already are. Ask yourself:

If you answered yes to any of those, you have the raw material. The qualification gives you the framework, the language and the recognised certificate to build on it.

One more thing: who pays

If your employer benefits from you being qualified, and in most cases they will, talk to them about funding before you enrol. Many organisations have training budgets for this kind of development. Your employer can request an invoice and pay by Bank Transfer, with a multiple-booking discount of 5% for 3 to 4 staff and 10% for 5 or more. See can my employer pay for my course?.

If you are paying yourself, you can pay in full or spread the cost with PayPal Pay in 3 or Pay in 30 days. See how PayPal Pay Later works on our courses.

Not next year, not when things calm down, not when you have more time. Now.

This could be your September

The new academic year is a natural moment to decide that this time you are going to do it. Look at our courses and find the qualification that fits where you are and where you want to go. If you are not sure, the Course Quiz will point you to the right one.