Key Skills

What are Key Skills?

Key Skills are the essential skills that everyone needs to succeed in education and training, in work and in life in general.

After leaving school and setting out into the world and your career there are certain skills, that being equipped with, will make your day-to-day life easier and allow your career to progress.

Whatever you do and wherever you go, you’re going to have to know how to communicate and work with numbers, as literacy and numeracy as essential skills. These days everything seems to involve some kind of technology, be it email in work or shopping at home, so everyone needs to be equipped with basic ICT knowledge.

If you’re applying for a job or course it’s one thing to say that you have these skills, but ideally it would be great to have some kind of proof, which is where the Key Skills courses can help you. There are six of them altogether, the first three are the main ones:

• Communication
• Application of Number
• Information and Communication Technology
• Problem Solving
• Improving Own Learning and Performance
• Working with Others

Useful Links for Resources and further guidance:

www.keyskills4u.com
Key Skills Students Website
This site is packed with useful information, guidance and resources, a massive 400 hours of learning material is available.

www.key-line.org.uk
Key-line is a free service that offers you the chance to develop your professional skills. You can use this service to support your own individual development.

www.e-dysg.org.uk
Key Skills Professional Development
This web site has been developed to facilitate online Continuous Professional Development (CPD) in the post 14 education and training sector. The site has a number of Courses and Forums that can be used for personal CPD or can assist with quality improvement training.

www.dysg.org.uk
Key Skills in Wales
Dysg is a division within the Department for Children, Education, Lifelong Learning and Skills (DCELLS) focussing on improving the quality of teaching and learning in the post-14 education and training sector.

www.excellence.QIA.org.uk
Quality Improvement Agency
This is an online portal for staff in the further education and skills sector packed with resources to support teaching and learning and leadership and management, examples of effective practice and self-improvement, teaching and learning materials, and suppliers of improvement services.

www.qca.org.uk
Qualifications and Curriculum Authority
Advice and guidance for all learners, whether in school, college or work.

www.lsneducation.org.uk
The Learning and Skills Network (LSN) is an independent not-for-profit organisation committed to making a difference to education and training.

www.cityandguilds.com
City and Guilds’ dedicated Key Skills Website. It contains the qualification standards, practice Q & A’S, example portfolio documents and much more.