APEL will improve access to education and training and the awarding of academic, vocational and professional qualifications by recognising that learning is continuous, taking place at work, home and at leisure, as well as in the classroom.
The process provides a route for recognising your achievements and allows those achievements to contribute towards a qualification, a single module of study or a whole programme of study.
Although all that you have learned in life may be of value to you, the APEL process focuses on and gives credit for your attainments, skills and knowledge – in other words, your ‘competences’.
APL and APEL are of particular value to:
Mature students returning to education who lack the formal qualifications required for entry to a course of study. APEL can be used to gain access to a course of further or higher education.
Students of all ages who wish to study overseas, and whose domestic qualifications are not automatically accepted for entry to the overseas course of study. Here, APL can be used to gain access to the course of study.
Past students who have previous further and higher educational qualifications but who now seek to add to those qualifications in order to broaden their expertise or change careers. APL can be used to avoid repeating specific modules of learning by providing evidence that prior learning has already taken place.
Students who wish to return to courses of study that have been interrupted by work or family commitments. Again, APL can provide evidence that prior learning has occurred.