Essential Employability Skills are a set of social behaviours and skills that can be acquired and are seen as relevant to performing within all employment roles. These skills help employees interact and work with others in a variety of situations and are transferable, not only between different roles within an organisation, but across different employment sectors. Essential Employability skills do not include technical skills or qualifications required to undertake specific specialist roles.

The Entry 3 to Level 3 Essential Employability Skills qualifications consist of four main subject areas:

  • Planning and Organisation
  • Creativity and Innovation
  • Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
  • Personal Effectiveness

In order to gain the Essential Employability Skills qualifications, learners must demonstrate their skills in both a controlled task and a structured discussion.

The controlled tasks are pre-set and available in a variety of contexts.  There is an opportunity for centres to create their own controlled tasks, particularly for learners working within a specific industry or sector. If you would like more information on creating controlled tasks for your sector/centre please contact Judith Archer.

Candidates have a limited time to complete the tasks according to the level:

Level

Controlled Task

Structured Discussion

Entry 3

6 hours

0.5 hours

1

4 hours

0.5 hours

2

5 hours

0.5 hours

3

8 hours

0.5 hours

 

The Essential Skills Wales Qualification Handbook provides details on how the tasks and tests are to be administered.

Sample controlled tasks and structured discussions are available here.

These sample assessment materials have been developed jointly by the four Essential Skills awarding bodies (Agored Cymru, City & Guilds, Pearson and WJEC).

For further details, and to add the qualifications to your framework, click below:

Agored Cymru Level 1 Essential Employability Skills C00/0746/5
Agored Cymru Level 2 Essential Employability Skills C00/0746/6
Agored Cymru Level 3 Essential Employability Skills C00/0746/7
Agored Cymru Entry Level Essential Employability Skills (Entry 3) C00/0747/1