newbie question

marc29

Hello all
i am wanting to retrain to get my aat
i am self employed and not working in a financial sector at all
i wanted to know if i can pass / become aat qualified by just distance learning
i keep reading that you need work experience to pas the course
please i am very very confused does the diploma or nvq mean that you need work expereince?
please help
thank you for any advice
thank you
marc

MILLY21

Hi Marc. Ive completed my NVQ AAT, I have always worked within accounts but my friend on the course did not work in an accounts environment and she has passed the whole thing.

When doing a work based project (at technician level) she did the aats project so you can get all of your certificates by passing your exams.

The difficulty is in registering for MAAT status (i.e.letters after your name showing you are part of a professinal body) on completion of the technician stage because you need to show your work experience to qualify for this - that's were the work experience comes in and unfortunately getting into the workplace.

The AAT are really helpful so give them a call and see what they say, they will explain the whole thing better than I could.

Best of luck

sabrina1981

I'm doing NVQ at the moment. I work as an insurance administrator so don't deal with accounts at the moment. A lot of people on my course at college don't work in finance yet, but are looking to in future. I don't think it will be a problem until later on in the qualification as Milly mentions above, but I'm not sure about that. I'm personally looking to be working in practice by the time I've finished foundation and hopefully before I started intermediate so that my next year can be funded by the employer and so that I can gain practical experience too.

waternymph1979

Newbie

Hi Marc

I'm currently working in the NHS as a secretary but have had 'a bit' of exposure to some accountancy tasks in the past. I too am looking to retrain and do accountancy though I think if I can't get a trainee accounts assistant job (though these jobs rarely pop up where its only 'ideal/advantageous' that you have finance/office administration experience), I'm going to do distance learning or part-time evening through the local college.

I'm a bit fortunate in that my brother is self-employed so i'm hoping to get some work experience from that but i'm going to try and find out if I can get some experience in the voluntary sector.....you don't know until you try I suppose.

Good luck with it all.

Elaine

Monsoon

As others have said, the experience relates to getting MAAT (full membership) status. You can certainly get your full diploma/NVQ qualification but you won't be admitted to full membership until you have the relevant experience.

You can get this experience via self employment but it depends what you actually do.