This is the Future Fluency Diploma, at Level 3 and at Level 5. It is not a course you sit through. It is a record of what you can do, built out of your own job, and signed off by a human assessor.
We could have built Future Fluency as a course. Courses end with a completion record, and a completion record only means you were present. It does not travel to your next role, and it does not tell anyone what you can actually do.
So we levelled it instead. Every learning outcome in these two Diplomas is written against the Ofqual descriptors for its level, and every criterion is checked against them. That is what makes the difference between saying you are good with AI and having it assessed.
The evidence is your own work. The qualification is what happens when someone independent agrees.
A note on wording. These are customised qualifications carrying a level equivalence, benchmarked against the Ofqual Level 3 and Level 5 descriptors. That is not the same as an Ofqual-regulated listing, and we do not claim it is. Centre approval with the awarding organisation is in progress.
Working with AI, data, automation and the governance around all three. Plus the two human ones: keeping your skills current, and handling the people whose roles change.
You do it inside your real job. Every unit ends with something you produced at work, not an essay about producing it.
A portfolio, a recorded professional discussion per unit, and a level. Assessed by a qualified human, internally verified, then sampled externally.
This is the thing worth getting straight before anything else, because it decides which units you get.
You answer a question about your own work. You automate a task in your own work. The moment an outcome reaches a team or a department, it has left Level 3. Problems here are well defined, and may still be complex and non-routine.
You plan automation across a department, and you direct its priorities with data. Problems here are broadly defined, which means part of your job is working out what the problem is. You also lead the people whose roles change because of it.
Length does not set the level. A long project on a well-defined problem is still Level 3. Only the definition of the problem sets the level.
Total Qualification Time is every hour, including the ones you would have spent on the job regardless. Only the guided share is time under direction. Here is the split, and the honest arithmetic on what it means per week.
The whole qualification, across six units.
Two fifths of it. Time under direction, including tutoring.
If you take twelve months. Around ten a week over nine.
| Ref | Unit | Hours | Guided | Criteria |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZFF-AI-03 | Using and Checking AI Tools in Daily Work | 70 | 35 | 28 |
| ZFF-GM-03 | Developing a Growth Mindset for Changing Work | 50 | 25 | 22 |
| ZFF-DA-03 | Turning Workplace Data into a Recommendation | 60 | 30 | 24 |
| ZFF-GV-03 | Working Safely and Responsibly with AI | 50 | 30 | 21 |
| ZFF-AU-03 | Automating a Repeated Task in Own Work | 60 | 25 | 24 |
| ZFF-PJ-03 | Applied Project: Improving Own Work with AI | 100 | 10 | 26 |
| Total | Six mandatory units | 390 | 155 | 145 |
The project unit is a quarter of the qualification on its own. It carries ten guided hours, so almost all of it is you, at work, doing the thing.
The whole qualification, across five units.
About a third. The rest is departmental work you own.
If you take twelve months. Around eleven a week over nine.
| Ref | Unit | Hours | Guided | Criteria |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZFF-GM-05 | Leading a Department Through a Change in Required Capability | 60 | 24 | 28 |
| ZFF-EI-05 | Working with the People Whose Roles Change | 60 | 24 | 27 |
| ZFF-AU-05 | Planning Automation Across a Department | 80 | 46 | 26 |
| ZFF-DA-05 | Using Data to Direct a Department's Priorities | 70 | 40 | 25 |
| ZFF-PJ-05 | Applied Project: Annual Automation Plan for Own Department | 140 | 10 | 30 |
| Total | Five mandatory units | 410 | 144 | 136 |
Two of these units need other people. You will consult colleagues whose roles change, and you will present to a decision maker. Book that time early, because it is the part that slips.
Zavmo runs every journey through the same loop. What matters here is that the loop was built to produce evidence, not to produce completions.
Zavmo compares what you can already do against what the unit requires. You skip what you have, so the 390 hours are not spent proving things twice.
Sets your starting pointYou and Zavmo settle the path through the units, against your real role and sector. Your manager can see it. Every criterion is tickable before you start.
Names the criteria up frontYou learn in conversation with a tutor that adapts to your pace. It keeps pushing you up from remembering toward evaluating and creating, which is where the level lives.
Climbs the thinking ladderYour tasks, reflections and real examples are captured and mapped to criteria as you go. You are not assembling a portfolio at the end. It builds while you work.
Becomes your portfolioOne thing to be straight about. Zavmo teaches and it prompts you for evidence. It does not decide whether you passed. Every criterion is decided by a named human assessor, internally verified, and sampled by the awarding organisation.
This is the part that makes the time pay back. Every unit ends in something real, produced at work, that exists whether or not you were studying.
Six units, six things you will have made by the end.
Use a tool on a real task. Show what you verified, what you changed, and where the tool was wrong. Declaring your AI use is part of the criteria, not a confession.
Pick something in your role that changed. Show how you learned it, and review honestly how well the method worked.
Take a question about your own work. Choose the data, say what you left out and why, then present it and answer the challenge back.
Where the data goes, what you are not allowed to put in, what to do when the tool gets it wrong. Applied to your job, not to a policy in general.
Find something you do every week. Automate it, run it, and show what it now costs you instead.
Improve your own work with AI, end to end. Ten guided hours out of a hundred. This is the unit the assessor will spend the longest on.
Five units, and three of them involve other people's time.
Work out what your people will need to be able to do next. Then lead the shift, and evaluate whether your approach worked.
You will consult them, tell each of them what is expected, and say what support exists. Witness testimony carries this, so plan the meetings.
Not one task. The set of them, sequenced, with the trade-offs stated and the reasoning behind the order you chose.
Analyse, interpret and evaluate. Present it to a real decision maker, with the alternative reading of the same figures on the table.
A hundred and forty hours, ten of them guided. This is a document your organisation could act on, and that is the standard it is held to.
What we are not promising: a pay rise, a promotion, or a percentage figure for productivity. Anyone quoting you one of those has made it up.
390 and 410 are our estimates of the time a typical learner needs. Nobody has run a full cohort yet. If it turns out to be wrong, we will say so and change the figure.
At Level 5 in particular, a few criteria depend on a colleague or a manager giving you their time. Those are the ones that stall. Get them in the diary in the first month.
Every criterion is judged by a qualified assessor and sampled externally. That is what makes it worth having. It also means the AI cannot pass you.
The project unit is the largest thing in either Diploma. Choosing it well is the single decision that makes the rest of the hours worth spending. Bring one idea to the next session.
Level 3 units in full Level 5 units in full