#TRAVEL THE WORLD AFTER COLLEGE PLUS#

Schools rarely have appropriately qualified teachers. As a result many schools have now tried to prevent their students from leaving them and going to a college and have started offering a wider variety of courses to retain their students. Recent years have seen Further Education budgets severely pinched. Should I study travel and tourism at school or at a college? It has a lot of practical elements and will prepare you for the workplace better than university.

NCFE – This is pretty similar to City and Guilds but less well-recognsied. This means the qualification will be almost identical in whichever educational institution you choose. City and Guilds write the assessments for you, so unlike BTEC the lecturers will not have the option to amend as they see fit. It has a lot of practical elements including things such as role-plays and presentations. If you don’t like written work however, this might be the best option for you. It also has next to no preparatory content: academic skills such as critical thinking and analysis will barely be developed and you certainly won’t be required to reference your work. If you want to go to university this might be problematic as many universities do not recognise it. If you are considering going on to university a BTEC is probably your best option as it includes some units that are more closely aligned with academia.Ĭity and Guilds – This is probably most widely recognised by the industry as City and Guilds offer a broad variety is work-based qualifications. For this reason, BTEC is probably the most regarded vocational qualification but because of low pass rates at many schools and colleges many institutions have stopped offering BTEC programmes in exchange for ones below. Many could argue that historically this might have been the case (and still is with some qualifications), but BTEC have since tightened up their regulations and assessments and made them much more difficult. Level 5 (Higher National Diploma)- university year 2 equivalent, varying entry requirementsīTEC and other vocational courses tend to be frowned upon by academics as being ‘less worthy’.Level 4 (Higher National Certificate)- university year 1 equivalent, varying entry requirements.Level 3- A level equivalent, generally for those with C grades or above at GCSE.Level 2- GCSE equivalent, generally for GCSE D grade students.Level 1- year 9 equivalent, generally for GCSE E grade students.Often undertaken by those for who English is not their first language or for those with learning disabilities. Here is a summary of the levels:Įntry level- year 7 equivalent, generally no formal qualifications required.

These start at entry-level and run through to level 5. Below is a summary of the main awarding bodies offering travel and tourism qualifications in the UK.Įdexcel – You can do an A-level (which is less vocational and more academic in nature) but most educational institutions run BTEC courses. Some are more recognised, particularly at universities, than others. It is these awarding bodies that write the curriculum.

There are different awarding bodies that schools or colleges choose to work with. Instead, they are designed to prepare you for the workplace. Whilst many people who study travel and tourism at college do go on to study at university, they are not normally very well prepared as the courses are not designed to be preparatory for academia. Many jobs in the industry involve customer service – don’t like working with people? Shy? Maybe it’s not the industry for you then! There is a range of different courses available (see below), but almost all are focused on working in the industry as opposed to being academic. Some jobs involve travel but in reality, most do not. The negative however is that most of these jobs are relatively poorly paid.

#TRAVEL THE WORLD AFTER COLLEGE PLUS#

The plus is that travel and tourism is the world’s largest industry and so there are LOTS of career options. This post is aimed at helping those of you who are wracking your brains trying to decide which is the best option for you and how this might shape your career and your life. You can start on an entry-level course or you can start at level 3. You can stay on at school or you can move to a new educational institution. The time has come: you’ve finished your GCSEs and you need to enroll on a course at sixth form or college, but which course should you choose? There are many courses out there, academic and vocational in nature.

Travel the world after college