I am a trainer for an organisation of appox 1600. The organisation will close in the next 4 years and I am planning to change my unit to a ECDL (European Computer Driving Licence) center in order to offer staff recognised computer certification when they leave. I am interested to know what impact, if any, ECDL has had on industries in Europe
Steve Searcy
4 Responses
ECDL versus City & Guilds
The rumour is that ECDL is about to receive Government Approval, but C & G are fighting back with the new Level II IT Users qualification.
ECDL – the world
You will find the ECDL is being encouraged and therefore recognised by many businesses and industries throughout the UK, i.e. NHS, local authorities, banks, so this qualification will be a useful to your staff. ECDL has been approved for funding – you should speak with those at British Computer Society, Swindow to find out more and look at the site. You yourself will need to obtain the ECDL qualification in order to run the testing.
Use in Europe?
But the original question related to European industries and I wonder how it is recognised there. There are overseas centres but what about recognition in the workplace?
ECDL seems to become ‘standard’ I.T. skills qualification in UK
Steve
I am currently delivering the last module of ECDL training for an organization, like yours, that will close its doors at end of this year. There are 200 employees (production, engineering, QA, warehouse and office workers) to lose their jobs and ECDL training is in addition to and part of their redundancy package. Like Sally Penn’s comments that many businesses and industries throughout the UK have implemented or are implementing ECDL programme as part of their learning and training development. ECDL seems to become ‘standard’ I.T. skills qualification in UK and Europe.
ECDL is a good basic I.T. skills qualification for (absolute) beginners who’ve never ‘touched’ a computer. However, it is probably not suited for people who use computers daily and regularly at work because they will find it too easy and simplistic. Regular I.T. users may wish to consider Advanced ECDL qualification.
There are only two Advanced ECDL modules (text processing and spreadsheets) available currently though two more modules (presentation and Databases) are promised to become available this year.
I am not sure what impact ECDL, if any, has had on industries in Europe. Perhaps through ECDL higher percentage of ‘older’ employees are now generally I.T. literate and become more employable.
Best of luck with your implementation of ECDL programme.