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 LSC
KILLED OFF
The government has announced a series of reforms in an effort to improve
the delivery of skills for adults and young people. The plans will
mean the dissolution of the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) by 2010.
Of the LSC’s £11
billion annual budget, £7 billion will be transferred to local authorities
to help colleges and sixth forms deliver the reforms needed to raise the education
and training leaving age to 18. The remaining £4 billion a year will be
managed through a new agency – the Skills Funding Agency – to provide
training and skills for adults, with the aim of “transforming the system
to be responsive and demand-led”. [Few in the professional IT training
sector will lament the passing of the LSC. However, the high hopes we all had
when the LSC took over from the old Training & Enterprise Councils were largely
dashed. As observers remarked at the time, nothing really changed – all
we got were the usual suspects, and the same bureaucratic attitudes, with a new
sign over the door. It is to be hoped the opportunity will not be missed this
time round.] Apr 2008
PPI
ACQUIRES THE PROJECTS GROUP
 Learning solutions company PPi Learning Services has announced the acquisition
of The Projects Group plc, a specialist project and programme management
support organisation. TPG has been developing and delivering project
management training and consultancy internationally for over 20 years,
and will remain a specialist project and programme management business.
As well as supporting UK and international qualifications with flexible
blended learning, TPG provides consultancy, maturity assessment, staff
profiling and knowledge management. “PPi and TPG share complementary
business models and the collective experience of the two organisations
in the project and programme management arena is unequalled," according
to Jon Buttriss, CTO at PPi. Apr 2008
BROADSKILL
JOINS BRAY LEINO
Business process and IT training specialist BroadSkill Ltd has become
part of Bray Leino Group, which provides a range of services spanning
advertising, events, PR, digital and organisational development. Bray
Leino is a top 20 advertising agency with a turnover of more than £52
million, while Broadskill is listed in the IT Skills Research/Pardo Fox
Top 50 IT Training Companies. The new business will be called Bray Leino
BroadSkill. At the same time, the new team is joined by David Harman
from LDL (Leadership Development Ltd), who has been appointed as CEO
reporting through the Group board, which will also be strengthened by
the addition of Henry Jodrell of BroadSkill. Apr 2008
ONLINE
ITIL EXAMINATIONS
IT professionals taking the BCS-ISEB ITIL V3 Foundation Exams can now
take them online. The new facility enables students to sit their exam
and receive their results on the same day.
ITIL has expanded from a UK government philosophy to become the world
standard in IT service management best practice. Around 35% of organisations
in northern European countries have adopted part of the ITIL philosophy,
according to estimates by the IT Service Management Forum. Almost 450,000
people have taken ITIL examinations since the early 1990s. Apr
2008
LOGICACMG
BECOMES LOGICA
 The LogicaCMG group has unified all its existing brands under one new
name – Logica. LogicaCMG was formed in December 2002 when Logica
and CMG merged. It is a leading IT and business services company, employing
39,000 people across 36 countries, and is listed on both the London Stock
Exchange and Euronext (Amsterdam). In the UK, it has a substantial IT
training business and in 2007 was ranked seventh in the IT Skills Research/Pardo
Fox Top 50 IT Training Companies. Apr 2008
QA-IQ
COURSES LEAD TO UNIVERSITY ACCREDITATION
QA-IQ is to launch a new partnership for degree-level accreditation of
its 'Art of People' management and personal development courses. The
programme will be launched at the forthcoming HRD show – where
visitors will be able to get a taste of the development techniques used
on QA-IQ's courses by trying the Strength Deployment Inventory (SDI)
used to identify personal strengths and how individuals relate to others – and
will provide the opportunity to gain a management degree from a UK university
while taking courses from the QA-IQ management and personal development
portfolio. Apr 2008
SHORTAGE
OF SECURITY SKILLS, SAYS COMPTIA
 There is a wide gap between the IT security skills that organisations
want and the corresponding skills that workers bring to the job, according
to a global survey of IT professionals commissioned by CompTIA. Among
organisations surveyed in nine countries with established IT industries
(including the UK, France and Germany) 73% identified security, firewalls
and data privacy as the IT skills most important to their organisation
today. But just 57% said their IT employees are proficient in these security
skills. The gap is even wider in countries where the emergence of a strong
IT industry is relatively recent. Apr 2008
BOB
LITTLE PARTS COMPANY WITH TATA
Bob Little Press & PR, a specialist PR agency in the corporate learning
sector, has parted company with e-learning producer Tata Interactive
Systems (TIS). TIS will now be taking its PR activities in-house. Little
began working with TIS in September 2001 – not long after TIS established
an office in the UK – and since 2005 had also been advising the
company on its worldwide PR strategy. [Under Little's expert guidance,
Tata has been one of the industry's most prolific generators of news
releases. We hope they will both continue to flourish.] Apr
2008
NEW
QUALIFICATIONS AND CREDIT FRAMEWORK
 The British Chamber of Commerce has been working with the Qualifications
and Curriculum Authority (QCA) to produce a leaflet to
publicise the new Qualification and Credit Framework to employers. The
new Framework, which is due to be launched in 2009/2010, will introduce
the unitisation of qualifications. This will mean that employees
will be able to take 'units' of different qualifications or 'credits'
to make up whole new qualifications based on their needs and those of
the business they work for. The aim is to simplify the current qualification
system by making it easier to understand and easier to recognise the
difference between qualifications and skills. (Reported by Learning & Skills
Newsletter) Apr 2008
BEST
PRACTICE SHOWCASE
The Best
Practice Showcase 2008, organised by The APM Group, will take place
on 24th June at the QEII Conference Centre in London. The event is expected
to attract around 500 programme, project and risk managers from the public
and private sectors. As well as four conference streams, delegates can
choose from boardroom workshops, interactive sessions and discussion
forums. Over 30 accredited training and consulting organisations will
participate along with the event’s sponsors – the Office
of Government Commerce, Project Manager Today and TSO. Apr
2008
INTERNATIONAL
EXPANSION FOR MAVEN TRAINING
 With PRINCE2 rapidly becoming an international standard, Maven Training
has established new training partnerships in Europe, the Middle East
and America. In the USA, Maven has formed a partnership with Watermark
Learning in Minneapolis. In Poland, it is licensing materials to Centrum
Rozwiązań Menedżerskich. In Denmark, Maven will be working
with Peak Consulting Group. And in the Middle East the company has entered
into an affiliate relationship with CMCS. So extensive is PRINCE2's use
and applicability that in the last 12 months over 20,000 people have
taken either the PRINCE2 Foundation or Practitioner Examinations. Currently
more than 700 people a week take one or other of these exams. Apr
2008
BRIGHTWAVE
DELIVERS 100% GROWTH
Brightwave, which describes itself as a “workplace communications,
learning and performance support specialist”, says it more than
doubled its turnover in its last financial year, with its strong growth “fuelled
by the addition of over a dozen organisations to an already extensive
client list, as well as high levels of repeat business”. During
2007 Brightwave took on seven new fee-earning staff, brought new software
products to market and moved into new offices in central Brighton. It
says with several new contracts recently landed and a strong pipeline,
the future also looks positive. Apr 2008
QA-IQ
LAUNCHES NEW .NET 3.5 CURRICULUM
QA-IQ has launched its new .NET 3.5 schedule with a full development
path of courses from beginner to expert levels. The courses range from
an introduction to .NET for those new to the framework, through language
courses for Visual Basic and C#, to application development and skills
for those working with enterprise technologies. The new range updates
a number of QA-IQ's most popular courses. It combines both QA-IQ's own
Performance courses, developed by its instructors and technologists,
and key courses from the Microsoft Official Curriculum. Apr
2008
ASSIMA’S
NEW SALES ORGANISATION
 Assima has announced a new sales organisation aimed at delivering over
100% growth in sales of new software licences throughout Europe and the
Middle East during 2008. The new organisation is tasked with further
accelerating the impressive growth of Assima’s software solutions,
including its pioneering Thin Clone Technology and associated suite of
products, which includes the new Assima Training Suite v6.0 as well as
its Performance Suite (for workplace performance management), Change
Management Suite and Multilingual Solution. The new organisation will
be headed by Vice President of Software Sales & Marketing, EMEA,
Germain Bourgeois. Apr 2008
TOO
LITTLE STAFF TRAINING
Tackling the skills shortage is key to turning the UK into a successful
'innovation nation', according to the government – which has set
out its vision for promoting the uptake of new ideas in a Department
of Innovation Universities and Skills (DIUS) whitepaper. The UK's long-standing
skills crisis, and the reluctance of employers to invest in training,
are identified as barriers to future success. The UK's productivity performance
lags behind leading international competitors, according to the paper,
which claims up to one-fifth of the productivity gap is due to lack of
skills. It says that while participation in higher education has increased
rapidly, “too many people of working age have few qualifications
and one-third of businesses do not invest at all in training". (Reported
by silicon.com) Apr 2008
NEW
LEARNING TREE COURSES
 Learning Tree International has announced the addition of two new courses
to its Project Management and IT curricula that focus on the features
of SharePoint Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS)
2007: ‘Leveraging SharePoint for Project Management’ and ‘Administering
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007’. Learning Tree has also
added three new courses to its Windows Server 2008 curriculum: ‘Windows
Server 2008 Administration’, ‘Windows Server 2008 Active
Directory Domain Services’, and ‘Windows Server 2008 Group
Policy Management’. The new courses will be introduced at Learning
Tree’s Euston House Education Centre in May. Apr
2008
CORNERSTONE
ONDEMAND ANNOUNCES RECORD YEAR
Cornerstone OnDemand, a US-based “provider of on-demand, integrated
learning and talent management software and services”, has announced
that the fourth quarter of 2007 was a record quarter and 2007 a record
year for the company, with high growth and top rankings in customer satisfaction
for Software as a Service (SaaS) learning and talent management provision. The
company says its achievements in 2007 included 353% year-on-year growth
in the number of subscribers to its learning and talent management suite,
as well as the renewal of 97% per cent of its client base. During the
year Cornerstone raised $32 million in new financing, and expanded internationally
by opening offices in London, Paris and Munich. Apr
2008
GIUNTI
LABS ACQUIRES HARVESTROAD BRAND
 Italy-headquartered e-learning firm Giunti Labs has finalised its acquisition
of the Australian HarvestRoad brand and its HarvestRoad Hive digital
repository, TCMS Technical Content Management Systems and related Intellectual
Property Rights (IPR) and worldwide installations. The HarvestRoad Hive
product line will remain, as a part of Giunti Labs' growing suite of
solutions and services within the learning and technical content management
space. Giunti Labs has integrated HarvestRoad's workforce into the newly
established Giunti Labs Asia Pacific subsidiary, with offices in Perth
and Sydney. Apr 2008
REDTRAY
EXPANDS E-LEARNING EXPERTISE
Blended learning specialist RedTray has appointed two e-Learning Development
Managers to head up its team of instructional designers and learning
consultants. Paul Rogers has over 20 years' commercial e-learning experience,
and is an international speaker on technology-delivered learning with
specific expertise in rapid solutions, while Andy Allport is a specialist
in e-learning development and training needs analysis and was a founder
director of blended learning provider Walkgrove. Apr
2008
CIOS
NEED MORE THAN JUST TECHNICAL SKILLS
US analyst firm Gartner says experienced IT practitioners, including
current CIOs, will need to acquire at least one or two years of non-IT
business unit management experience if they want to pursue new CIO opportunities
in future. Gartner says CIO candidates are no longer required to have
formal technology-oriented backgrounds, but that new CIOs need non-IT,
business unit executive experience, and that new, non-IT duties are being
given to more and more new CIOs. (Reported by BCS) Apr
2008
WE
NEED MORE TECH TRAINING, SAY SMEs
At the recent CeBIT show, European associations representing small and
medium-sized enterprises called for more European Commission-backed funding
for SME employee IT training. The European Association of Craft, Small
and Medium-sized Enterprises (UEAPME), which has 12 million member companies,
reminded European governments of the importance of e-skills training
for smaller European businesses to remain competitive. And the pan-European
ICT and e-business network for SMEs (PIN-SME), which represents more
than 50,000 European e-businesses, also emphasised the key role of ICT
in driving small-business expansion, and says less than 50% of SME employees
have formal ICT training. A European Commission representative promised
increased funding for small businesses, but said they should not rely
solely on the Commission, and instead should take risks to grow, including
attaining more e-skills. (Reported by silicon.com) Apr
2008
EUROPEAN
E-LEARNING AWARD FOR CELT
The Content Editing and Localisation Tool (CELT), from London-based business
consultancy PHM, has received the European e-Learning Award 2008 for
Best Practice in e-Learning at CeBit in Hanover. CELT allows content
adaptation of multinational applications, and enables users to translate
and localise SCORM-compliant e-learning courses by accessing the course
files through an online portal. Currently CELT has translated and localised
over 160 versions of eight different e-learning courses developed by
PHM. The tool supports all European languages – including Russian – and
is in the process of being upgraded to five Asian languages. Apr
2008
QA-IQ
SERVICE MANAGEMENT PRACTICE READY FOR ITIL V3
 QA-IQ says it is ready to deliver the popular ITIL Version 3 Manager's
Bridge course, as its first seven Principal Lecturers have already taken
the Bridge exam, achieving a 100% pass rate. The course, designed for
holders of the existing ITIL Manager's Certificate, gives a fast track
route to the new ITIL V3 Expert qualification.The QA-IQ course is accredited
by, and follows the syllabus specified by, the APM Group. Apr
2008
KEY
APPOINTMENTS AT DTV
Business skills video producer Digital Training Videos (DTV) has made
two senior appointments. Sean Walsh joins as Managing Director, bringing
over 20 years of international broadcasting experience including positions
as Deputy Editor of Current Affairs at Anglia Television, and Deputy
News Editor at ITN. And James Ralph, DTV's new Sales Director, arrives
with over ten years’ experience of assisting individuals, teams
and businesses to improve organisational service and profitability through
better leadership and communications. DTV launches in April 2008 with
an initial release of 20 newly produced films. Apr
2008
MAVEN
TRAINING LAUNCHES THREE SCHEMES FOR CPD
Maven Training has announced three innovative training schemes for people
committed to Continual Professional Development but without time to spare.
PRINCE2 After Hours gives delegates the opportunity to attend PRINCE2
courses in evenings or over the weekend and is designed to benefit delegates
who are unable to take time out of their busy schedules during the week.
PRINCE2 Near You offers training in a location to suit the delegate,
saving them valuable commuting time and money whilst allowing them to
reap the benefits of a recognised qualification: Maven Training runs
these courses in 18 UK locations, and they are also available in the
Middle East, Europe and the USA. Finally PRINCE2 Plus provides courses
in Bank Holiday weeks, offering six days' training for the price of five. Apr
2008
90-MINUTE
TRAINING FOR BUSY PEOPLE
Creativedge Training and Development has developed a portfolio of short,
high-impact training sessions for busy people. Aptly named Rapid Results,
the flexible 90-minute training sessions concentrate on the key elements
of a topic, providing participants with practical tools and ideas that
can be put to work straight away. The 24 different sessions are organised
into two categories, Management & Leadership and Personal Development.
Rapid Results sessions can also be completed as a certified Award Programme
endorsed by the Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM). Apr
2008
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