The Transition Year course, set up for your school.

It is a 120 hour course and students have nine months of access. A focused class working in a weekly slot with study at home finishes in three to four weeks. Most schools run it across a term because that suits the timetable better. Both are normal, and nothing is lost by taking longer.

Anything from a group of five up to a full year of a hundred, and five is the smallest cohort we run. Pricing is tiered by cohort size, so the per student figure comes down as the group grows, and a cohort of fifty or more is quoted individually. Tell Jess your numbers and you get a written quote back.

One slot a week is enough, and there is nothing for a teacher to prepare or mark. Our assessors mark the written work. The staff job is holding the school code and glancing at the progress dashboard now and again.

No. The course teaches itself. Schools usually put it with whoever has the slot, and we have had it run by an Irish teacher, a woodwork teacher and a deputy principal in the same term.

It is the same 120 hour qualification adults take before they go abroad to teach. We are Ofqual regulated, accredited by OTCAC and the course carries 120 CPD credits from The CPD Group. A TY student finishes with the real qualification, not a version of it made easier.

No, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. The CAO counts the six best results in recognised subjects in one Leaving Certificate sitting. What the certificate gives a student is evidence for their TY portfolio, something concrete for a personal statement and a CV, and a genuine route into paid work later.

Yes, as a Personal Skill, and Gaisce lists online courses as an example. The catch is that Gaisce counts weeks rather than hours, so Bronze needs the work spread across thirteen weeks and Silver across twenty six. If Gaisce is your aim, run the course weekly across the year rather than as a three week block.

Nothing. It is self paced with nine months of access, so a student out for a fortnight picks up where they left off. That is the main reason coordinators like it beside activities that fall apart when somebody is absent.

They do not need to be given any. You get a school enrolment code, students enrol themselves online using their school email, and that is the whole administrative job. No spreadsheet, no password resets.

Yes, on a laptop, on a school computer or on the mobile app. Most classes end up doing some of it in the slot and some of it at home, which is what makes three to four weeks realistic.

It does, but let us be accurate about it. Northern Ireland has no Transition Year. The closest stage is post-GCSE Year 13, and schools there run this as sixth form enrichment against the Entitlement Framework rather than a TY plan. The course, the certificate and the support are identical.

Digital certificates are included and hard copies are available on request. Schools that present them at a TY graduation usually order hard copies for the whole cohort at once.

There is no single answer, but coordinators tend to judge a TY course on five things: whether the student ends up holding an external qualification, whether there is per student evidence for a review, whether it still counts to somebody in three years, what it costs in timetable and staffing, and whether a student who misses a few weeks can catch up. Apply those five to anything you are considering, including this. The comparison table further up this page shows where we come out on each of them.

Schools commonly run online modules in coding, first aid, driver theory, financial literacy, digital skills and language teaching. The practical difference between them is whether the course ends in an externally awarded qualification or in a certificate of attendance from the provider. This one is an Ofqual regulated 120 hour TEFL qualification, so the student finishes with the same certificate an adult takes before moving abroad to teach.

Yes, and it is one of the more common ways schools use it. The student produces ten assessed module records, a dated completion record and a certificate in their own name, which covers the evidence a TY project needs. If you want a presentation element, most schools add a short lesson taught back to a first year or language class, planned using the lesson planning module.

It is, though it is not usually filed under that heading. Students plan and deliver lessons, which is public speaking, patience and preparation in one. The difference from most life skills modules is that this one also ends in a regulated qualification, so the year leaves something behind that a student can still use on a CV or a CAO personal statement.

Coordinators tell us the same thing repeatedly: a good TY programme balances things that grow the person with at least a few things that leave the student holding something. Work experience, community projects and life skills modules do the first. External qualifications do the second. A year made entirely of either one tends to be the year students describe as wasted.

Pricing is tiered by cohort size, so the per student figure falls as the group grows, and it is quoted per school rather than published as a single rate. Send Jess your expected numbers and start term and you get a written quote back with nothing to sign.