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"Tailoring skills to suit employers’ needs
Scotland’s colleges are emerging as powerful forces in the training and development sector, with some even having set up new divisions to cater specifically for the needs of employers.
These include BC Consultants, a company set up ten years ago by Borders College; and SCE Enterprise, a subsidiary of Stevenson College in Edinburgh, which provides services across Scotland, the UK and internationally.
Programmes are arranged to meet the needs of clients. Deirdre McKendry, Managing Director of BC Consultants, explains: “We are wholly owned by the College, but all our work is around workforce development. Our aim is to fulfill the needs of employers in terms of training by providing vocational and bespoke courses.”
Subjects covered by the company include Social and Childcare, Customer Service, and Financial Services. “A lot of the work we do is bespoke training and we can provide qualifications up to level five,” says McKendry. “We are very employer focused and aim to ensure that what we do impacts on a client’s bottom line.”
At Stevenson College, SCEEnterprise also focuses on providing training across a wide range of knowledge and skill areas. It develops frameworks to assess needs, propose and design courses, arrange and manage delivery and evaluate the effectiveness of the training.
Employers are also served by the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) which is the national accreditation and awarding body in Scotland. As well as working with schools and universities, it also offers a wide range of qualifications and tailored services which support employers.
The SQA points out that qualifications are essential tools, and they also support the standards of achievement required by the economy, business and society.
Another advantage is that they provide a solid record of progresssion and help with lifelong learning by allowing individuals to build on awards they already hold.
Like training organisations, the SQA believes that qualifications have to reflect the appropriate level of learning – they must capture and reflect an appropriate level of skills, while at the same time being flexible enough to support different learning styles and employer needs.
It also believes awards have to be of a standard that ensures their value is maintained over time, and that the skills challenge is an increasingly important focus for countries around the world, with sustainable economic growth only possible if those skills are made relevant to the workplace." The Scotsman ~2 September 2009
Please click on links below for further information and also details of Scotland Skills Event on 1 October 2009 at the Thistle in Glasgow where staff from BC Consultants will be in attendance.