The Key Skills Qualification is a frequently required component of 14-19 education in England, Northern Ireland and Wales. The aim of Key Skills is to encourage learners to develop and demonstrate their skills as well as learn how to select and apply skills in ways that are appropriate to their particular context.
It is generally available in schools (alongside GCSEs, A-levels or other qualifications), Further Education colleges (alongside NVQ, as part of Apprenticeship training or other equivalent vocational or academic courses) and other places of learning (sometimes alongside other qualifications and sometimes independently). The qualifications can be taken at levels 1-4.
The Department for Children, Schools and Families in England and the Department for Children, Education, Lifelong Learning and Skills in Wales define Key Skills as "a range of essential skills that underpin success in education, employment, lifelong learning and personal development". The DfES website states that the Key Skills Qualification is offered as a response to concern from employers about lack of essential skills in young recruits and as part of the response to the 1996 Dearing Report. Key Skills qualifications at levels 2-4 attract UCAS Tariff points for University admissions.The UCAS tariff is a points system used to report achievement for entry to higher education (HE) in a numerical format.
Read more about Key Skills Qualification: Subjects, Levels and Progression, Key Skills Awards, England, Wales, Scotland
Famous quotes containing the words key and/or skills:
“Japanese mothers credit “effort” as the key determinant of a child’s achievement in school, while American mothers name “ability” as the more important factor.”
—Perry Garfinkel (20th century)
“Play for young children is not recreation activity,... It is not leisure-time activity nor escape activity.... Play is thinking time for young children. It is language time. Problem-solving time. It is memory time, planning time, investigating time. It is organization-of-ideas time, when the young child uses his mind and body and his social skills and all his powers in response to the stimuli he has met.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)