Home study.

Good luck with this Bertie.

In many ways I think home study is far harder than conventional tuition; too many distractions.

Tattoo a large L on your head instead. While you toil to get qualifications, savvy people are nipping down shortcuts and earning straight away.

I`m in a dead end job with only a few GCSE`S so i`ve got to start somewhere??

If you're earning less than £15,000 per year you qualify for a grant by the way.

Even above this figure some discounts are available.

I`m earning between 21 - 25k p/a mate.

I think you would still qualify for certain discounts Bertie.

Didn't mean to sound so mean, sorry.
My view is better explained thus: that if you want to get on ,for some people earning a qaulification is a procrastinators way of delaying big decisions while appearing to be making progress.
Have a stiff coffee and go shake some trees would be my advice. Tell the people at work you want more and want to progress. you want it and you want it now, (as the double glazing salesman says).

My missus is doing a distance learning course.

I also retrained a few years ago for the job I do now although it was part residential/part home study. I would agree with the above poster that it is harder than going to college for example - too many distractions at home and you need to be disciplined.

Where are you based?

No offence taken Speedy.
Cheshire Daley, if you don`t mind me asking, what did you do and what is the wife doing? How is she finding it?

I did accident investigation, the missus is doing accountancy.

She's doing ok, plodding along really - like I said, it's all about discipline really. If you're motivated enough you should be fine.

What are you thinking of doing mate?

I am, but I'm going out in a minute.

I was actually leaning towards accountancy, although i know it`d take at least a couple of years to start getting `up the ladder`
I`ve seen the course you`ve done advertised but assumed it was a scam.... Obviously not!
Are you working for yourself? Who did you do the course with?

Yeah, self-employed. Not sure the guys I trained with are still around - or if they are they're trading under a different name. All much of a muchness though really; you could probs do the same thing with any company.

I might be packing it all in soon actually as I've been offered a job as an air traffic controller (training starts in May) but I can't decide whether to take it or not!

Ok mate. Thanks for the help and good luck if you take the job.

Bertie , how old are you? Not that it should matter really.

One bit of advice. I work in accounting for a city council. The days of council jobs being protected for life are over. With the mess in the ecomony money coming through as funding to councils is due to decrease.

What I'm saying is that if I had my time again I would have gone into private sector accounting. Just marking your card.

I've did some open university courses a while ago and found them generally very good

i'm not saying you are but as a general observation it should not be understimated how much time/work they involve. in particular, one year i did 2 x 30 point courses instead of a 60 point course and that ended up being even more work!

for me though it was a really worthwhile experience

one tip someone gave to a mate of mine who was looking for a change of direction in his work: think of exactly what you want to do and then work backwards, i.e. go to your ideal employer or people doing what you want to do and find out what you need to be able to do that, working back that way rather than going to a college or training centre, saying 'i want to do this' and asking them for advice on courses

I did post-grad work in my late 30s for a few years, I was pretty ill at the time, but putting that to one side, I found it oddly difficult to get my academic mojo going.

Be sure to commit, get organised and good luck!