I have been contacted by a very nice person at the learning and skills council and have agreed to a follow up contact after hearing about some very interesting possibilities.
Over the past few months I have seen and heard of a rather mixed bag of comments and feedback about the learning and skills council and possibly other government funded schemes which I have lumped together?
So I would really like to hear from training managers and organisations who have used the learning and skills council. How was it for you?
One specific sales point which was repeated a lot was the provision of free training. Is this for real or is it free-ish?
All the best.
Nick
Nick Hindley
2 Responses
LSCs
Hi Nick
I’ve had a lot to do with our local learning & skills councils (East Midlands) particularly with regard to European funded projects. They do tend to vary quite a lot.
They do indeed provide contracts that allow you to provide free training – however, many of these are aimed at “the hard to reach” which it can – obviously – be difficult to recruit. Once you’ve found out more about what’s on offer – you might want to explore (paid)arrangements with one or more voluntary or community groups who are embedded in or at least close to the communities in question to help you deliver the contract successfully.
Let me know if I can be of any more help.
Regards
Cathy
Mmmm….
I don’t think that you were contacted by the LSC here, I think you were contacted by a Train2Gain agent or similar on behalf of the LSC.
Free training provided by LSC funding is usually low level (i.e. up to Level 2 – English, Maths and the like) and then you may attract subsidies (or not) for anything else and have to pay the difference.
I once used to run a brokerage contract for the LSC and the training we offered was not of the greatest quality (we didn’t develop or deliver any training – we packaged it out to “selected” LSC suppliers, usually but not always local colleges). Nor did it really meet the needs of the employers that we engaged with (too low level – and poor skill transfer into the workplace).
I think from my own experience that the LSC spends a lot of public money to deliver low quality, low value training and that a large percentage of businesses have already hired people who can read and write and add up, and don’t want to get bogged down in NVQ’s (experience says that these are not valued by organisations in the main or the particpants).
One of the things they do well though is sponsor the development of new qualifications to meet market needs and we certainly got good financial support to deliver new programmes to our sector.
All in, I would listen to what they have to say and then do a little research on top to find out if the training (whether free or not) really meets your business needs and is of the standard you expect before committing to anything.
(Cue angry response from LSC funded training providers…)