Professional Registration Conversion Pathway to Certification for Apprentices

If you have successfully completed your (LIAS) Level 3 Apprenticeship (England) in the last year, we have a specific accelerated route to achieving Certification that takes into account the skills and experienced gained during your apprenticeship.

Your first step towards Certification is to read, if you haven’t already, the general Certification Guide as this gives a good foundation to understanding what is expected of candidates.

The three criteria that you will be assessed on remain the same as for all Certification candidates:

1. IDENTIFY areas for improvement in your personal performance, UNDERTAKE activities to develop skills and enhance knowledge
2. CONSIDER the organisational context of your service and EXAMINE your role within the organisation
3. ENHANCE your knowledge of information services in order to understand the wider professional context within which you work

Candidates taking this pathway to Certification will not be required to undertake new activity or to supply new evidence relating to criteria 1 and 2. Instead candidates are asked to reflect on the process and outcomes of undertaking Apprenticeship; and on the process and outcomes of applying skills in practice.

Additionally, candidates will not be required to use a PKSB self-assessment as the basis of a development plan that will help them meet criteria 1 and 2. Instead, candidates on this route will be required to undertake one PKSB self-assessment to demonstrate their engagement with their ongoing professional development after they have been awarded their apprenticeship.

Unlike our standard arrangements for Certification, there will be time constraints for candidates taking this route; this balances candidates using their apprenticeship as evidence with the requirement for evidence to be recent.

The following time constraints are in place for this route:

• Enrolment for Certification should be no more than 12 months after being awarded the LIAS L3 apprenticeship; and
• Submission for Certification should be no more than 18 months after being awarded the LIAS L3 apprenticeship.

If it is more than 12 months since you were awarded the LIAS L3 apprenticeship you can still enrol for Certification but will need to take the full standard route.

What does Certification via this route involve?

The candidate submission will consist of the following required elements:

• Confirmation that you have been awarded the LIAS L3 apprenticeship
• An Evaluative Statement covering your reflections as described above and also how you meet criterion 3
• 2-3 pieces of new evidence supporting the evaluative statement for criterion 3

• A personal PKSB assessment report (the Rated Areas report is suggested)
• A curriculum vitae
• A current job description

* Reflective writing must be used for the evaluative statement and the evidence for criterion 3; the word count for the statement will should be 600 - 1,000 words, with 1,000 being the maximum allowed.

Enrolment

In order to enrol, you will need to have your membership number, the date that you were awarded your LIAS L3 apprenticeship and be ready to pay your registration fee of £45. Please note that you will also need to pay a submission fee at the point at which you submit, currently this is also £45. Use the link below to enrol:

ENROL NOW

You will be prompted for payment when you complete the form. If you wish to be invoiced so that your employer can pay, please ensure that you have a Purchase Order Number, if required. Your enrolment will not be processed until we have received payment. Once we have received payment you will then be enrolled into the Professional Registration Candidates’ Group. You will find all your support material in this area.

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