There comes a time in your career when the boredom sets in, you feel as though you’ve done everything many times over and you are ready for another challenge...

Of course, changing a career entirely when you’ve spent years building up your expertise is not for the faint-hearted as this means starting from the bottom again. When you’ve come to rely on a certain level of income, you don’t want to go back to an apprentice wage.

This is where “pivoting” your career is a more suitable option for most than a complete change.

If you’ve worked your way up the ladder, supervised and trained junior members of staff and helped them along their journey, you will have gained valuable skills that will enable you to pivot into training or NVQ assessing.

Combining your wealth of knowledge in your area as well as your practical mentoring skills, all you have left to do is formalise it all by earning your teaching qualification.

And this doesn’t have to cost you too much.

The teaching course

There are courses that are easily accessible for those who want to enter the teaching arena. For example, the Level 3 Award in Education and Training, which has succeeded PTLLS as the foundation teaching qualification accepted by FE colleges, allows you to enter the classroom and gives you three credits towards a full Diploma in Education and Training.

The qualification involves 30 hours of classroom learning with 30 hours of independent study. The L3 AET can be taken as a part-time course over 12 weeks so you can train alongside your current job.

The course will teach you the tenets of lesson planning and appropriate methods of lesson delivery so you can take your knowledge and structure it into a series of fun and engaging sessions.

Pre-requisites for enrolling on a foundation teaching course

You should possess a level three NVQ or equivalent qualification in the subject you are going to teach. You should also ensure that you have a minimum of a level two qualification for numeracy and literacy, so if you have a GCSE grade C, this should be sufficient. At the beginning of the course, you will be assessed in numeracy, literacy and IT.

Why teach

Teaching is a vital skill for the construction industry as it prepares the next generation of workers for carrying out their duties with a high level of professionalism. Teachers who have a deep understanding of their trade gain the respect of students as their knowledge is not merely theoretical, but based on their unique experience on the building site.

Training apprentices and junior workers enables you to inspire those entering the profession, who will be doing so for a variety of personal reasons. Perhaps construction isn’t their first love, but you can help them feel more excited if you show them what you love about it.