The Student's View
Name Tanya Gokcezade
Age 18
Current Position Still doing GNVQ, but with part-time job at Oasis (a clothes shop)
Course Advanced GNVQ in Information Technology
College Reading College and School of Arts & Design
Why GNVQ?
After completing her GCSEs, Tanya decided to go straight to college and undertake an Advanced GNVQ in IT. She is now in her second and final year.

Keen to pursue a career in IT, Tanya felt that the Advanced GNVQ provided her with a good basis for progressing into the sector.
"I have always been interested in IT and knew that I wanted a career in that industry. I was attracted to the Advanced GNVQ in IT because it covered so many different parts of IT and it would give me a better knowledge of the subject."
The Advanced GNVQ has allowed Tanya to focus on the one subject that she is really interested in, providing her with an all round knowledge of IT.
"The GNVQ doesn’t prepare me for the business side of things, but it does give me a broad understanding of IT and IT skills that I can then adapt when I get a job."

"Now I am very keen to go on developing my knowledge and skills. Once I am established in this job, I would love to do a part-time degree."
The course
Tanya likes all the subjects that she is being taught, but she feels that programming (hardware and software) and teamworking are some of the most important areas of knowledge and skills that she is developing.

Although Tanya has found the assessment process quite different to GCSEs, she has found it easy to adapt
"When I was doing GCSEs it was mostly lectures and then you’d do a bit of practical so that you could show the teacher you understood. In the GNVQ, we are put into teams, sometimes with people we didn’t know, to see if we could work well and to time. Then we give a presentation to show what we have learnt".
Tanya has found that this is a good way of getting a feel for what it is like in the job to work together to meet deadlines and to show how you can use skills and ideas in a team to meet business goals.

Tanya has had a work placement in a company working on the scanning side of IT. She found it useful to see what it was like to work in the graphical side of IT, which she had not learnt about before.

One of the most important things that Tanya felt she had learnt was the real need for everyone to do their job well for the company to succeed.
"I can see how the team working skills that we learn in the GNVQ relates to the work. It’s not something you can choose when you want to do it, you have to do it to meet the business needs of working to schedules. At school, if you hand your homework in late they’ll tell you off and say hand it in tomorrow, but if you do that at work the company will fail."
Each day she was put in a different department, so that she got to see how everything worked and learnt about scanning, match printing (image work), archiving and computing.
Getting the job
Currently Tanya is in her final year of her GNVQ, however she does also have a part-time job as a shop assistant. Although it does not relate directly to the work she wants to do, it is providing her with the opportunity to improve her understanding of general business needs and to develop all important customer service skills.
 "I’m quite a shy person and I didn’t like answering the phone, but now I answer the phone, help customers as much as possible and it’s built up my confidence a lot."
She feels that this customer contact is an important aspect of this job that may be important in her future career.
The Future
At the end of the course, Tanya is hoping to go to University and do a Business IT degree. After that she hopes to go straight into a job.
"I hope that the degree will show that I am dedicated and have learnt as much as I can about business and IT and hopefully my skills will be useful to an employer."