An initiative which enabled over two hundred people in Donegal and Limerick and Clare working in the healthcare and financial sectors to have their experience recognised, validated and certified, has concluded.
For the last two years staff from the Education and Training Boards (ETBs) in both regions have been working on a project to develop an alternative accelerated route to qualifications, using Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) as the mechanism.
This mechanism ensures the skills and knowledge gained through life outside of formal education and training is evaluated and validated.
For many, learning by doing is a more meaningful way to absorb and process information. It is instinctive learning that does not perish quickly. By enabling adults to match the skills and knowledge they have gained in their workplace or through community engagement to a national qualification, the duplication of learning is avoided.
The overall ambition of the initiative was to embed RPL as a key process in both ETBs and share the outcomes of the project with the wider FET sector through a toolkit that was developed to guide the process and formally launched on 3 June. The toolkit provides a range of resources for the RPL process.
Speaking about the launch of the toolkit, Donegal ETB’s Director of Further Education and Training, Ciaran O’Brien said: “The staff who developed these resources did so by combining expertise gained through successful participation in the Level 9 Special Purpose Award in RPL delivered by Letterkenny Institute of Technology, now Atlantic Technological University Donegal, with their hands-on experience of promoting and implementing the RPL process for applicants.”