It was business as usual for the Training Foundation on its 10th birthday, with another 30 delegates receiving their TAP diplomas.

This latest tranche join more than 20,000 TAP qualified L&D professionals and the 120 organisations that are now TAP partners.

“It’s been a long, but highly rewarding journey, with many milestones along the way,” said deputy chief executive Adrian Snook. “Ten years ago the L&D community was pretty resistant to our arguments that L&D needed to up its game, so it’s immensely satisfying to be in a position now where TAP is the de facto training standard in a growing number of sectors.”

In 2005 The Training Foundation’s achievements were rewarded with the Queen’s Award for Enterprise: Innovation.

However, its founder and chief executive feels there is still much to be done to fulfil the Foundation’s mission. “As long as the perception of training as the preserve of the ad hoc amateur persists it will always be viewed as an overhead rather than an investment. No wonder, when times are hard as they are now, it has historically been one of the first areas to fall victim to cuts.” Mitchell said.

“Our next challenge is to underpin these training skills with the human attributes that foster optimum learner engagement through our new ‘Trainer of Choice’ initiative. We don’t just want professional trainers; we want great trainers because the skills required for UK plc’s productivity and competitiveness depends on them.”