What to do while I'm waiting to return to work?

[piprabbit]

I'll be returning to work (hopefully) in 18mths - 2yrs.

I'm a graduate with 16 years experience working as an IT Developer and Technical Specialist for a major bank. Somehow I never got any formal qualifications - just lots of technical training on stuff like DB2 databases, SAP, MicroFocus etc.

However, I think I'll need a career change as I can't face going back to spending 4 hours a day commuting. I need something I can do more locally, and I'm obviously accepting that I won't be able to earn anything like comparable money.

So, my question to all you wise people is... what can I be usefully doing in the next few months to position myself better for a job?
Should I try and get something like the ECDL Advanced to prove my IT literacy skills, or is it a waste of time and money?
Local careers people were very keen that I get all my Literacy and Maths skills certified as it's so long since I was at school - but that seems very odd to me.
I've just completed an introductory course with the OU - what next?

BTW - I'd love to get into teaching adults, possibly basic IT skills, but the teaching courses all need me to have a job teaching the subject I'm interested in and the employers all want experience...so I cant get my head around how to crack that one at the moment.

Thanks in advance.

If you are primarily interested in teaching adults you could look into City and Guilds courses - ie. Preparing to teach in the Lifelong Sector 7303 from which you can progress to Certificate and Diploma level if you so wish. Course is about 40 hours long and includes delivering a sample session to others in the group and feedback. PTTLLS is the minimum qualification required to teach on Government funded courses and you can do so without other formal qualifications in your subject as long as they weren't doing accreditted courses(ie in FE). The course is often offered on a part-time basis. With this you could then be employed on a sessional basis by whoever provides Adult courses in your area (may be the council , may be subcontracted to a college or charity).

Thanks LIZS for your thoughts - I'd had a look at the PTTLLS C&Gs, I could probably do it through the voluntary work I do as a course leader, but that's a different subject to the one I want to end up in.

I'll take another look though and see if I can't track down someone to talk about it.