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A college is offering an advanced certificate to students who have done the fetac level 5, its is not a fetac Laval 6, so basically they want student to do an extra year with no recognized qualification to show for it. I think this is being very unfair to the sutdents...a lot of them don't seem to understand that the extra year might be a wast of time.


Could someone explain this ...if you do a HND ( straight from your LC ) which takes two years you can then go to the UK and get an Hon's degree with one extra year of study? yet here it can take up to 5 years if you include the year dong the fetac Laval 5?

Trying to help someone who dose not have much family support and has asked my advice.

looksee

If you have enough points to do a HND straight from LC then you can go on and do a degree here too. The whole thing only takes five years if you need the points (or want to do it for any other reason) and do the level 5 to start.

I am not sure about doing an Hons degree in the UK with one year of study after a HND, possibly an ordinary degree, but I am not sure about that. However the difference is nothing like as extreme as you are saying.

As for the advanced certificate, you could you be more specific? Maybe it is some sort of professional qualification rather than FETAC. Possibly it is in a private college and is something they have created themselves. It does not mean that all colleges are offering it.

Its not a private college its a VEC college, they have told the students its called an advanced cert, and its is not a leval 6 fetac.

This college offers a HND in a media type subject and it says in their brochure they say you can progress on to a UK college ( named college ) and have an Hon's degree with one more year of study.

looksee

Advanced certificates in FETAC are Level 6. I think you will have to be specific about the course to get any further information about this. HND and Level 6 are not the same thing.

They have now been told unofficially that it will be a level 6 type award next year, but they are not calling it a level 6 because they have not got official permission to run the course yet!, seems a bit odd to me. Plus they have not been giving any information on what level they will be at if they want to transfer to a degree, will an institute of technology let them in to the second year of a degree or will they still have to go in the first year of a degree?

implausible

mariaalice wrote: »

They have now been told unofficially that it will be a level 6 type award next year, but they are not calling it a level 6 because they have not got official permission to run the course yet!, seems a bit odd to me. Plus they have not been giving any information on what level they will be at if they want to transfer to a degree, will an institute of technology let them in to the second year of a degree or will they still have to go in the first year of a degree?

Nothing odd about it, unfortunately VEC colleges are often not told until very close to the start date whether they will be allowed to run the course or not. A further complication is that FETAC is changing its courses and modules, some from now and some from Sept 2012. I co-ordinate a Level 5 course and we have a shedload of work to do for Sept. I am in regular contact with another college which often runs the Level 6 Childcare course and they still can't tell me or my students if the course will be running. One year, they were not given the go-ahead until August:eek:

As for transferring to an IT, you need to get in contact with the particular IT and ask them directly what the situation is. One of my students got it confirmed to her (after a lot of ringing and emailing) that the IT would take in a very limited number of Level 6 students into second year, if places were available. However, you will not find that info in a brochure or a website. You need to go looking for it.

I'm confused as to how a college in the South could offer both FETAC and HND (which is a British qualification)

Looksee is right - if you don't get straight into college from Leaving Cert, obviously an alternative route is going to take longer.

I don't know a lot about this area, so I don't know why some VEC colleges are offering HND courses.

The student I am talking about went to the local VEC not because they did not have the points for the course they wanted, but because they did not have the money to go to college last year ( I wont fully go in to the story because they are entitled to their privacy)....when they told me about the advanced course and asked my opinion I was concerned that they might end up doing two years at the VEC college and still only end up getting in to the first year of the degree thy want to do, thus having to do six years to get a degree!.

I have helped this student with small amounts of money/clothes because I know how hard they work to get what they want.

If any teenager/ student is reading this and has financial support from parents be very thankful because its very hard to do without any help form anyone.

Its amazing who knows you from boards!...I have been directed to the NQF web site and it says that level 6 is a Hetac qualification ( no mention of Fetac ) so I am none the wiser, because on the qualification wheel its mention IoT and DIT( under the level 6 qualification) no mention of colleges of further education.

looksee

There are two different things here. Hetac is Higher education (universities and ITs leading mostly to degrees) Fetac is Further education and is a completely different thing that occasionally appears to overlap with Higher Education.

Further Education is life-long learning, education for people who may well have slipped through the education net, giving them a chance to get back on board. Its not quite as precise as that, but a lot of the value of it is that it is not as tightly 'tied up' as the rest of the education system.

It is run through VEC colleges and some schools, the colleges are operated as adult environments though they are strictly speaking under second level control.

You can do level 5 courses in Fetac, they are considered to be comparable to (same level as) leaving cert. With a level 5 you can get into ITs and Universities provided they permit the use of level 5 as access to the course in question. You have to enquire about that with the Higher Education institution that you wish to get into.

Some FE colleges are offering some level 6 courses, these are considered to be the same as first year in a Higher Education institution. If you get satisfactory results at level 6 (and that would be more than just a pass usually) and provided the HE institution permits it, you can skip first year and go directly into second year of a three or four year course.

The Irish NFQ (National Framework of Qualifications) is here http://www.fetac.ie/fetac/awardsinfo/nfq/nfq.htm and does include Fetac.
You are probably looking at the UK NFQ which does not include Fetac as Fetac is an Irish setup.

In Ireland you do a Certificate (level 5), then an Advanced Cert (Fetac) or a Higher Cert (Hetac) both are level 6. The extent to which these are acceptable for moving onto another level in a higher institution, whether in Ireland or UK is up to the higher institution. It is not automatic that if you get an Advanced cert in, say, Multimedia, you will automatically get onto a 2nd year Multimedia degree course. You have to check before you do it and plan your route.

You are confusing the UK NFQ and the Irish NFQ. They are not necessarily interchangeable. You will see from the Irish framework that and the UK framework http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/EducationAndLearning/QualificationsExplained/DG_10039017 that the situation in the UK is completely different, even though a lot of the terminology sounds very similar.

Thanks looksee I am sure it will all work out.

Re the UK verse Irish qualifications, my daughter has an Hon's degree in nursing which took her 3 years which she did in Manchester, my husband has an Hon's degree in civil engineering which took him 3 year he went to uni in the uk, yet you can no do an Hon's degree in Ireland without doing 4 years study.

looksee

Well yes, it is up to different countries how they administer their degrees, that is why your degree has to be approved if you want to, say, come to Ireland with a UK degree and get into teaching.

WestportCFE

looksee wrote: »

You can do level 5 courses in Fetac, they are considered to be comparable to (same level as) leaving cert. With a level 5 you can get into ITs and Universities provided they permit the use of level 5 as access to the course in question. You have to enquire about that with the Higher Education institution that you wish to get into.

A simpler way would be to look at the CAO website and this page in particular http://www2.cao.ie/fetac/fetac_search.php and search for the course you wish to study in and Iot or university and see what they accept from FETAC. Some allow you to compete against leaving cert students others allocate a FETAC quota.