Ascentis · RQF Level 3
Ascentis (AptEd) Level 3 Certificate in Information, Advice or Guidance (QCF)
You don’t just earn this. You learn to use it, one-to-one, on your own real work.
- LevelRQF Level 3
- Total credits24
- Guided learning120 hours
- Units in this qualification21
Awarded by Ascentis · on the Ofqual register
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See how this course maps onto your role
Ten quick questions, one per Future Fluency, asked against this qualification rather than a generic one.
About 5 minutes · No card · Nothing to commit to
What you’ll learn
What each unit actually teaches you to do
These are the units Ascentis registers against this qualification. It is a catalogue, not a syllabus. Which of them you take depends on the combination the qualification requires, and that is set by the awarding body rather than by us. Every unit here is regulated, and every one you earn is yours to keep.
Applying Interaction Skills for Information, Advice or GuidanceReal unit · Ascentis
What you'll be able to do
- Explain the information, advice or guidance service and own role, and how to agree the use of the service with clients
- Understand the importance of confidentiality, data protection and impartiality in interactions with clients.
- Understand the importance of effective communication skills in the delivery of information, advice or guidance.
- Understand how to explore a range of options with the client to meet their requirements.
- Agree an appropriate course of action with the client.
- Identify personal development needs.
Developing Interview Skills for Advice Work - DebtReal unit · Ascentis
What you'll be able to do
- Interview clients with debt problems appropriately.
- Understand support available to the advisor.
Developing Interview Skills for Advice Work - EmploymentReal unit · Ascentis
What you'll be able to do
- Interview clients with employment problems appropriately.
- Understand support available to the advisor.
Developing Interview Skills for Advice Work - HousingReal unit · Ascentis
What you'll be able to do
- Interview clients with housing problems appropriately.
- Understand support available to the advisor.
Developing Interview Skills for Advice Work – BenefitsReal unit · Ascentis
What you'll be able to do
- Interview clients with benefit problems appropriately.
- Understand support available to the advisor.
Developing Interview Skills for Advice Work – Refugees, Immigrants or Asylum SeekersReal unit · Ascentis
What you'll be able to do
- Interview clients and advise appropriately on refugee, immigrant or asylum seeker issues.
- Understand support available to the advisor.
Information, Advice or Guidance - Principles and PracticeReal unit · Ascentis
What you'll be able to do
- Understand the relationship between information, advice or guidance.
- Recognise the limits of own ability and role in relation to delivering information, advice or guidance.
- Understand equality and diversity in relation to information, advice or guidance.
- Understand own organisation’s policy on record keeping, data protection and confidentiality.
Information, Advice or Guidance Work with GroupsReal unit · Ascentis
What you'll be able to do
- Recognise the role of group work in information, advice or guidance.
- Understand the factors which can influence the effectiveness of information, advice or guidance group sessions.
- Plan, conduct and evaluate information, advice or guidance sessions.
- Understand the skills required to establish co-operative working relationships within information, advice or guidance group sessions.
Managing Statistical Information to Support Information, Advice or Guidance PracticeReal unit · Ascentis
What you'll be able to do
- Understand the importance of and the reasons for collecting statistical information within own organisation.
- Understand the purpose of the quality systems within own organisation and how they are implemented.
- Understand how to use the management information systems within own organisation.
- Understand the requirements of data protection in relation to information, advice or guidance practice.
Managing, Accessing and Creating Information Resources in Information, Advice or GuidanceReal unit · Ascentis
What you'll be able to do
- Understand ways of managing information resources.
- Understand the range of media which can be used to provide information for clients.
- Understand ways of acquiring, creating and maintaining information resources.
- Understand Codes of Practice and principles in relation to managing information resources.
Operating within Networks to Support Information, Advice or GuidanceReal unit · Ascentis
What you'll be able to do
- Recognise the role of networks in supporting information, advice or guidance.
- Understand the need for networks to operate within Codes of Practice and Principles.
- Understand the different roles within networks.
Organising and Administering Job BrokerageReal unit · Ascentis
What you'll be able to do
- Network with other services/agencies.
- Manage and record information requirements for job brokerage.
- Know the relevant aspects of benefit and employment law.
- Market and promote the service.
- Understand potential areas for conflict in job brokerage.
Providing Information to ClientsReal unit · Ascentis
What you'll be able to do
- Understand information needs of clients within own context.
- Know the range and relevance of information available to clients within own context.
- Understand how to use computer-based packages to identify information, advice or guidance needs of clients within own context.
- Plan progression routes and methods to meet client’s needs and requirements within own context.
Providing Information, Advice and Referral to Support Learner ProgressionReal unit · Ascentis
What you'll be able to do
- Know the range of personnel involved in information, advice or guidance roles.
- Know about information, advice or guidance available to support learner progression and the appropriate referral processes.
Referral in Information, Advice or Guidance PracticeReal unit · Ascentis
What you'll be able to do
- Know the referral procedure within own organisation.
- Understand the scope of information, advice or guidance within the context of own role.
- Understand the purpose and process for referral within the context of own organisation.
- Apply good practice when referring clients.
Reflecting on Own Practice in Information, Advice or GuidanceReal unit · Ascentis
What you'll be able to do
- Understand their role and contribution in achieving own organisation's objectives.
- Understand how to identify own personal development objectives.
- Create an action plan to meet own personal development objectives.
- Recognise how own beliefs, attitudes and behaviours may impact on own work and that of the organisation.
- Understand the need for accountability and adherence to codes of practice in information, advice or guidance.
Understand Career-related Interviewing Skills to Enable Learner ProgressionReal unit · Ascentis
What you'll be able to do
- Prepare for client interviews.
- Explore the range of options with the client to meet their requirements.
- Assess the appropriate level of intervention or support for different clients.
- Understand reflective evaluation of interviewing practice.
Understanding Learner Progression OpportunitiesReal unit · Ascentis
What you'll be able to do
- Know about appropriate learner progression opportunities.
- Explain the opportunities for progression and how to use the appropriate information resources.
Working with Employers in Job BrokerageReal unit · Ascentis
What you'll be able to do
- Understand the relevant labour market in relation to employers.
- Know staffing requirements of local employers in relation to numbers and skills.
- Approach employers about arranging work experience/voluntary work placements.
- Work with employers on recruitment processes.
- Understand how employer feedback can contribute to a better service.
- Advise employers on how to support people with particular needs in the workplace.
- Market job seekers to an employer.
Working with Job Seekers in Job BrokerageReal unit · Ascentis
What you'll be able to do
- Explain the job seeker service to, and maintain contact with, job seekers.
- Assess an individual’s readiness for work.
- Support job seekers in developing and following job search action plans.
- Understand issues that can impact on appropriate matches between job seekers and employers.
- Assist job seekers with applications and prepare them for interview.
- Understand how to support a successful job seeker in the early stages of their employment.
Working within Information, Advice or Guidance Operational Standards and FrameworksReal unit · Ascentis
What you'll be able to do
- Understand how to work to operational standards within information, advice or guidance.
- Recognise the importance of quality assurance within information, advice or guidance standards.
- Understand the importance of monitoring and feedback in meeting the requirements of operational standards within information, advice or guidance.
The honest bit
You’ve started things before
Most courses were built for a room full of people who aren’t you. A cohort moves on whether or not your week allowed it, and by the third week the thing you’re behind on becomes the reason you stop opening it.
There’s no cohort here, and no timetable to fall behind. Before anything starts, Zavmo asks when you’re sharpest and how long you can realistically sit down for, then builds the sessions around those answers. A bad fortnight changes your pace. It doesn’t put you behind.
And you only pay once you start learning. Searching and planning are free, and you can cancel any time — so the cost of finding out is an afternoon, not a year.
Your passport
Every credit is a stamp you keep
Level 3 credits are regulated. They don’t vanish when a subscription ends or a website closes. They travel to any employer, and Zavmo keeps the map of what you’ve earned and what’s next.
Each stamp is a real unit registered against this qualification.
Who’d teach you this
The Evidence Evaluator
Assessor
Helps you show what you can actually do, gathering the evidence that proves it as you learn.
Meet all twelve tutorsWhere this connects
Where these credits take you
A qualification is never a dead end here. See the jobs its credits open, the national occupational standards its units map to, and the future skills they quietly build.
- Assist individuals to evaluate and contact support networks
- Enable support networks to develop their effectiveness
- First line asylum legal advice
- Identify the needs of job seekers to enable a good job match
- Identify the needs of the job seeker
- Obtain and establish information on clients’ Technical Surveillance Counter Measures requirements
- Operate within networks for coaching or mentoring
- Provide first line asylum legal advice
Where this can lead
Associate Employer Branding Specialist
This Associate role is a fantastic launchpad. We'll invest in your development, and you'll have plenty of opportunities to grow. Whether you want to become an expert in employer branding, branch out into other areas of marketing, or even move into recruitment, the foundation you build here will set you up for a really interesting career. It's all about what you make of it and how much you're willing to learn.
See the whole journey →Skills it covers
What the job actually needs. These are the standards the units are built against, in the words employers and awarding bodies already use for the work itself.
How you’ll actually learn this
One-to-one, on your own real work
A qualification is usually something done to you: sit the class, sit the exam, hope it sticks. Here it’s the opposite. You learn it one-to-one with a companion, on your own real work, and you keep going until you can use it, not just recall it.
Applied to your work in any of these jobs
- Remember
- Understand
- Apply
- Analyse
- Evaluate
- Create
Built for Ascentis (AptEd) Level 3 Certificate in Information, Advice or Guidance (QCF)
21 units in this credential, in the order it lists them, awarded by Ascentis.
- Applying Interaction Skills for Information, Advice or Guidance
- Developing Interview Skills for Advice Work - Debt
- Developing Interview Skills for Advice Work - Employment
- Developing Interview Skills for Advice Work - Housing
- Developing Interview Skills for Advice Work – Benefits
- Developing Interview Skills for Advice Work – Refugees, Immigrants or Asylum Seekers
and 15 more in the full unit list below.
One to one, not one to many
No two people run this the same way
A course is written once and handed to everyone. This is assembled around you, and keeps changing as it learns you. Five things it reads, and what each one changes.
- Your actual work Every unit is taught against a live piece of your own work, not a worked example from a textbook.
- What you already know The first conversation finds your starting point, so you skip what you can already do and spend the time on what you cannot.
- The conditions you learn under Not a learning-styles quiz. The evidence does not support those. The dimensions the research does back, read once and used to shape the plan.
- How far you got last time It picks up mid-thought. The tutor knows what you said, what you struggled with, and what it asked you to try.
- Which tutor suits the moment Twelve of them, each for a different kind of thinking. The one who walks you through a first idea is not the one who stress-tests it.
See how you learn, free. Eight questions, no sign-up. A directional taster; the diagnostic inside Zavmo goes deeper and keeps adapting.
Why it sticks
Most courses stop at remembering
There’s a well-known ladder of how deeply you learn something, called Bloom’s Taxonomy. Most courses get you up the first two rungs: you remember some facts, you pass a test, you forget it. Real skill lives at the top. Judging, deciding, creating. And this isn’t a generic ladder: every rung has a named Zavmo tutor who walks you up it.
- 6CreateThe Creative Catalyst
- 5EvaluateThe Evidence Evaluator
- 4AnalyseThe Analyst
- 3ApplyThe Coach
- 2UnderstandThe Connector
- 1RememberThe Builder
Where most courses leave you Where Zavmo takes you
The value
Why the companion is worth £70 a month
You’re not paying for the units. They’re regulated, and the same wherever you earn them. You’re paying for the one thing that decides whether you actually get there: a companion that makes them stick, on your real work.
That is one-to-one on this qualification, every day, on the work you already do, for £70 a month. Your first module is free, so you can see the teaching before you pay for any of it. Billed monthly, cancel any time and billing stops.
Earned on your own work, taught to the top.
Everything you just read, learned one-to-one on the job you already do. Your first module is free, so you can see the teaching before you pay for any of it.
Build my plan, freeNo card. See how this qualification maps onto your role and meet the tutors who’d teach it, free. The learning begins when you subscribe. It’s £70 a month, billed monthly. Cancel any time and billing stops.