Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is a way for professionals to maintain, improve and broaden their skills and knowledge and develop the personal qualities required in their professional lives. CPD is offered in a variety of formats, including workshops, online courses, seminars, short courses, certificates, diplomas and masters degrees.

Entry Level courses are designed to be accessible and relevant to those who want to return to education. There are no qualification requirements to enrol, and many courses are either free or available for a nominal charge. They usually last for a couple of hours a week, either during the day or evening, and run for as many weeks as you need.

There are four stages to choosing the right Higher Education course: deciding the type of course, the subject, the mode of study and the institution. Read on the following article and get more information on course choosing.

Learning online can give you the flexibility and freedom to study where you want and at your own pace. A wide range of media is used to provide communication between tutors and students and to help with learning.

Open learning aims to remove the education barriers to people without the usual formal educational history, making learning open to everyone. Courses generally have no entry requirements, no upper age limit and range from short courses for people who have never studied before to specialist programmes aimed at postgraduates.

If you've already attended a further or higher education course and want to progress to advanced study, then your previous qualifications may be used to either gain you admittance to the course, or in some cases, give you what is known as 'advanced standing' - exemption from some of the programme units.