Hear This! IT Training Podcast

IT Training magazine and the BCS have published their first IT Training podcast. Chaired by editor Helen Boddy and featuring Xpertise’s Bill Walker and IT Skills Research’s David Pardo, the podcast discusses changes to the training company landscape, potential effects of the credit crunch and what should go into IT training's Room 101. It’s already heading rapidly up the Tech News iTunes podcast download chart! You can download it now at www.bcs.org/upload/mp3/itt-episode1.mp3 (23.6Mb).

The Skills Debate

With recession looming, we might have expected to see an easing of demand for scarce IT skills. Not a bit of it! There appears to be rising alarm – or even total panic – about alleged skills shortages in IT.

A survey of IT executives by the Economist Intelligence Unit, sponsored by SAP, showed two-thirds expected it to become tougher to retain and recruit staff in the coming years as the skills shortage starts to spread to emerging markets; SAP says it already faces problems finding staff with soft skills at all levels, from graduates through to senior people. The CIPD’s annual Recruitment, Retention and Turnover Survey says UK business is feeling the widespread effects of a ‘skills crunch’, and 86% of employers are still having trouble filling vacancies in spite of talk of an economic slowdown. And the BCS has warned that the government's decision to remove funding for second degrees in IT will deter significant numbers of people from entering “an economically vital sector already suffering from a dire skills shortage”.

So what is the cause of the problem? Well, there is evidence of declining interest in IT as a career choice: UK IT Training, one of the largest suppliers to the self-funded market, says it stopped selling IT training last October because response rates to its recruitment advertising had slumped to the point where the business was no longer economic. And the teaching of IT in secondary schools needs radically overhauling as it is putting kids off a career in technology, according to leading figures from academia and industry. They say the UK's status as a world class IT nation “is being threatened by a skills black hole which is getting bigger ever year as fewer and fewer kids choose to study computing”. In fact new research by CRAC says very few students hold negative perceptions about the IT profession or its people, but over 60% of non-computing students cited “boring work” as the main reason they would not join the sector.

And then, as well as the alleged shortage of IT professional skills, there’s the issue of IT skills in the wider workforce: an e-skills UK survey, reported in the latest issue of its ICT Inquiry, says that of the 7.1 million managers working in the UK, at least 61% are considered to have IT user skills below the level required by their employers.

Clearly there should be plenty of work ahead for providers of IT training!!

Latest News

As part of its annual IT Industry Awards, the BCS is now seeking entries for its IT Trainer of the Year award; the deadline for entries is 1 August, and winners will be announced at a ceremony in London in December. Entries have also opened for the World of Learning Awards, with eleven categories this year – entries close on 19 September, and cost £185 per category.

e-Learning company Epic has been acquired from Huveaux plc by Andrew Brode, a private investor with extensive corporate and organisational learning and development interests. Epic was bought by Huveaux in September 2005. And Intellego has acquired the assets of Zenosis, a publisher of compliance e-learning courseware for the pharmaceutical industry, from the Administrator.

Eva Bishop has left Oracle University, where she was Senior Director for the UK, South Africa & Ireland, following a major reorganisation. At ILX Group, Eddie Kilkelly, who was previously the Best Practice Group’s operations director – and who ILX says has been a key force behind the division's recent success and development – has taken over from Tony Glass as the division's managing director. And KnowledgePool has appointed Al Bird to the newly-created role of Learning Consultancy Director; he joins from Accenture, where he was Business Development Director of Accenture Learning. KnowledgePool has also appointed Account Director Mark Swain to its management team.

Among training business success stories this month, NHS IT delivery organisation Sussex Health Informatics Services has implemented an extensive ITIL training programme for staff and kept costs down by partnering with the training company Pink Elephant to resell places on the courses. Kineo and Cable&Wireless have partnered to develop rapid e-learning, enabling Cable & Wireless “to transform learning in the company and improve its responsiveness to customers”. Glasgow City Council has selected Brightwave to customise and implement a suite of e-learning tools as part of its new 'People Strategy' commitment to learning and development. A leading financial services institution is using mobile performance support delivered to its staff's PDAs and BlackBerrys, using a system supplied by Giunti Labs, to provide 'nuggets' of regulatory and compliance-based information. With content designed by blended learning specialists Redtray, seven NHS Trusts have developed new e-learning programmes for the specific needs of Mental Health care. And SkillSoft has negotiated new partnership agreements in China and Russia: Ambow, China's top provider of e-learning technologies, will become SkillSoft's exclusive distributor to the Chinese business and government markets, while in Russia, SkillSoft will work with local partner Noviy Disk, a leading developer, producer, publisher and distributor of software and games.

Learning company Matchett and AssistKD, a specialist in business analysis and systems development, have launched a Business Analysis Maturity Model with a training programme to match. European IT services company Steria has launched the first of four international training and development programmes in India, designed to create a single culture across its global workforce. CompTIA has announced it will soon begin the process of updating its CompTIA Linux+ certification. Business Service Management software specialist FireScope has opened an EMEA office in London, to coincide with the launch of its new configuration management database program. SkillSoft is offering free access to three courses designed to help employees tackle bullying, harassment and aggression in the workplace. And the Scottish Qualifications Authority, which has developed a bank of over 15,000 e-assessment items using specialist authoring tool ContentProducer from BTL, has released a white paper outlining “a sustainable model of e-assessment”.

A European e-Skills 2008 Conference will be held in Greece in October, jointly organised by the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (Cedefop) and the European Commission, in partnership with the e-Skills Industry Leadership Board. Following the recent adoption of the European Qualifications Framework, an EQF Implementation Conference has taken place in Brussels; a target date of 2010 has been set for countries to relate their own qualifications systems to the EQF. And back in the UK, more than 300 IT training providers came together in London to share best practice at e-skills UK's annual ITQ conference in May; uptake of the ITQ has more than doubled in the past two years, with over 40,000 people starting the qualification in the last 12 months.

Finally, the government intends to introduce a new legal right for workers to ask their employers for time off to train, and is publishing a consultation into how the new right will work. It says it expects around 300,000 people a year to receive skills training who otherwise would not. The CIPD has cautiously welcomed the proposal, but warned that employers must be able to decline requests that do not meet business needs!

For more details and more stories, see the Industry News pages of the IT Skills Research website.

Financial News

Since the last newsletter, Intellego and ILX have reported good 2008 annual results as did Oracle. Red Hat got off to a flying start to fiscal 2009, and Xpertise issued a positive trading statement for 1H 2008. Details on the Members' Financial pages.