You take a skills for work course in place of a Standard Grade or Intermediate course. You have to decide which is more of an advantage to you. Your support teachers will help here.
A Skills for Work course is vocational or work based and you will learn practical skills in your chosen area as well as finding out and gaining about employability skills. You will have to work and study outside the school at a college or in a work place e.g a hair dressing salon or on a farm. At the end of the course, if you achieve all the learning outcomes, you will have the course noted on your next SQA certificate.
Skills For Work courses are normally taken in S3, S4, and sometimes S5, of secondary school. Your school will arrange for you to have a full morning or even a full day to go to the college or the industry partner to do the course. A full day allows you complete the course in one year, a half day in two school years. In some schools you may need to do a bit of catch up work if you miss other subjects on the day you go out of school. Your school will explain this.
These courses were introduced in 2004 and each year since more and more young people have been going on them. Between a quarter and a half of a year group often take part.
At the time of writing there are nineteen courses, mostly at Intermediate 1 and Intermediate 2 levels. You have to plan with your support teachers to find out which would be best for you. This web site is designed to give you information to do this.
No, as this is part of a pupils school education the costs (travel and protective wear etc) should be met by the school, college, or employer. The day may be longer than a school day however - especially if travel to a college or centre is involved.
The Skills For Work course has the same value as any other SQA course at that level. Intermediate 1 courses are equivalent to Standard Grade at general, and Intermediate 2 to Standard Grade at credit.
If you do an Intermediate 1 course in S3 or S4 you may be able to go on to an Intermediate 2 course in your remaining time as a school pupil. This can be in the same field or even something completely different. If you decide to leave school then other opportunities are available to you.
No, not as such. Schools usually arrange this seperately. However, most skills for work courses take place in a real work environment such as hairdressing salons, commercial kitchens, workshops, or for Rural Skills on a farm or in a market garden.
Yes, the skills you learn both practical and work based are of great interest to employers. If you have done well you will get a good reference from you course tutor and will know about the job when you have your interview. You may also have made useful contacts from training boards such as CITB in construction courses.
At further education colleges students can enrol to do SVQ courses or do these with an employer. Then there are NC courses which are available to those with Standard Grades or Intermediate Grade passes, and HNC or HND courses for those with Higher Grade subjects.