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Institute of Advanced Technological and Commercial Studies

Practical guides

Getting your work experience recognised

What you already know how to run is compared block by block with the target title's framework. This guide shows how to establish that match, what evidence supports it, and what recognition changes in your path.

The matching principle

A professional title breaks down into skill blocks, each with its study hours and content. Experience is compared with those blocks, one by one: for each, you set out what you ran, in what context, and with what result. That granularity is what makes recognition precise rather than approximate.

  • The target block, with its wording and study hours
  • The actions you ran that relate to it
  • The context: organisation, period, scope of responsibility
  • The evidence available: outputs, statements, working documents

Establishing your match in five moves

  1. 01

    Open the title framework

    Each title publishes its blocks and their hours. The catalogue describes 360 in all, every one available to read.

  2. 02

    List your professional actions

    What you organised, produced, checked, supervised. Action verbs, with a date and a scope.

  3. 03

    Match action to block

    Against each block, note the matching actions. A two-column table is enough and reads in a minute.

  4. 04

    Gather the evidence

    An output, a statement, a working document. One dated piece of evidence weighs more than a long description.

  5. 05

    Take the positioning interview

    It covers your table and your evidence. It concludes on the blocks recognised and the path still to run.

The catalogue calculation rule

Volumes are set by a single rule, published in the official catalogue: one credit equals twenty-five hours of work, of which ten are supervised. That rule is what converts a block into hours, and therefore what situates experience against it.

Out of twenty-five hours of total work.

supervised hours per credit
10
skill blocks described
360
supervised hours in the title catalogue
49 750

What experience establishes, block by block

Block elementWhat you bringWhat is examined
The block wordingThe matching actions, datedHow the actions match the content
The detailed contentThe tools and procedures handledThe real breadth of practice
The study hoursDuration and frequency of practiceThe depth of the experience
The expected outputWork you can showThe evidence, examined by a person

Recognition questions

Is informal experience taken into account?

Yes: what counts is the action run, not the status under which it was run. Independent, voluntary or family activity is established by the same evidence — an output, a working document, a third-party statement.

How does this differ from prior-learning validation?

Recognition situates your experience to build a tailored path. Prior-learning validation goes further: it awards one or more blocks, on file and interview. The dedicated guide details its seven steps.

How many blocks can be recognised?

The review covers each block separately, with no number set in advance: your matching table determines the extent. Recognised blocks stay acquired and the path is rebuilt around those remaining.

Who decides on recognition?

A named person. Settling a certifying mark and issuing an award are among the acts reserved to people, published in our governance: the decision therefore carries a name and a written reason.

Explore next

See all 44 pages
See the title frameworks
Getting your work experience recognised — Practical guides | IHETC — IHETC