Why not view this time on your hands as an opportunity to retrain and obtain a new or different career?

MANY people are experiencing redundancy at the moment. Why not view this time on your hands as an opportunity to retrain and obtain a new or different career?

O’Fiaich Institute of Further Education, Dundalk has a wide range of Post Leaving Certificate or Further Education courses which could help you to achieve this. From next September there will be twenty two courses on offer covering a wide range of subject areas such as:

• Engineering
• Information Technology
• Holistic Health Studies
• Photography
• Sport Health and Fitness Studies
• Nursing Studies
• Childcare

These courses are practical in nature and provide students with valuable vocational skills which can help them to gain employment or to proceed to higher education. These courses are all of one or two years duration and are open to learners from 17 to 70 years old.

They are available to school leavers, but also to mature students and the latter do not necessarily need to have passed the Leaving Certificate since different criteria are used in selecting mature students.

Although many students use PLC courses to obtain employment immediately after their course, an increasing number of both school leavers and mature students are using these courses as an alternative route into third level education. This can be done using the Higher Education Links Scheme or the Pilot Scheme, both of which can be used to access third level courses by using the FETAC (Further Education and Training Awards Council) qualifications which all students have an opportunity to obtain on these courses.

More information can be obtained about these schemes on the FETAC website, www.fetac.ie by following the Higher Education Links where it says Quick Links - Select. More information about the courses available in O’Fiaich Institute of Further Education can be obtained from the website www.ofi.ie.