What is the purpose of this qualification?
The purpose of this qualification is to develop learners’ IT skills and underpinning knowledge to enable progression to further learning but which can also be applied at work, and as part of their daily lives.
The qualification is designed for the following learner groups:
• Those in education to ensure they are equipped with the appropriate skills to support their personal or career development.
• Those preparing for employment or in employment to gain a level of skills application and development to enable practical exploitation of the potential of IT within the business environment
What skills, knowledge, or understanding does this qualification develop?
This qualification requires learners to complete a mandatory unit in Improving Productivity Using IT and then select additional units from a choice of units that includes different types of software and core IT functions for exampleaudio software, design software, spreadsheet software, imaging software, It communications fundamentals , computerised accounting.
This qualification can be tailored to the needs of individual learners as they can achieve a proportion of the learning at a higher level than that of the qualification and can pursue those areas of IT learning most relevant to them
How is this qualification different from other, similar qualifications?
The Level 1 Certificate in IT User Skills (ITQ) is most suitable for learners who require a programme of learning to developing their general IT skills that can be applied in learning or employment of for those who require a period of time to develop a specific / specialist aspect of their IT skills that can be applied in learning or their job role, eg book-keeping.
How will this qualification support the learner’s independence?
This qualification provides formal recognition of a learner’s IT Skills that can be applied in current or future employment for a variety of roles including those applying general IT skills in their day-to-day work or for those who require specialist IT skills.
Progression & entry requirements
It is likely that learners at this level will have no prior experience, but may have Entry level 3 experience/skills.
The approved age range for these qualifications is: pre 16; 16-18 and 19+.
Learners can progress in two ways:
• increasing the range of skills they have by increasing the size of their qualification (Certificate → Diploma)
• developing skills at a higher level by moving up the level of qualification from Level 1 to Level 2
