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In my now very distant youth I was very into student politics. Three of my friends from that time became cabinet ministers; one of them still is a cabinet minister. I won’t tell you which one of those embryonic political stars it was who gave me a ‘hot tip’ for public speaking, he was only twenty three at the time, he may have recanted since and become a reformed sinner, but I can reveal to you what he said.

“If you want to really impress your audience, pepper your speech with convincing statistics that prove your point”.

He did that all the time, he still does, come to that. I asked him how he got all that impressive knowledge. He replied; “I make it up. To be fair I think I’m generally on the right track. No one has ever challenged my statistics. Rattle them out with conviction, as long as there isn’t someone around with a lot of time to do the checking, you’ll get away with it.”

So here’s a statistic for you. UK bosses spend £2billion a year on corporate training and only about 2% of it is spent in FE Colleges. Did I make that up?

If public and private sector organisations prefer to use the expensive services of private trainers and consultants, rather than their local FE College, why is this? What do you want in the way of training services? What do you want from your local colleges? Are you getting what you want? Or is it more a case of horses for courses, you would use FE for some services and pay handsomely elsewhere for the rest? You can respond immediately on line now or you can read on.

You don’t always get what you want?    

For the same price as a one day or two day seminar, delivered by the current business guru, your employee could get up to 100 or even 200 hours of intensive training and some one to one attention, subsidised by the Government or the European Union. Some of it will specifically focus on case study problems you and your company are seeking to redress. Where we deliver to individual companies we customise the courses further and it can be all based on your own needs. You can get certificates and diplomas for HR, Marketing, strategic, accounting managers and for many other specialists. At the end of the course your employee can put letters after their name and be full members of a professional body. Promising people have the chance to gain internal promotion, as the qualifications and training they started with isn’t always compatible with what their next job is likely to be or the changing needs of their industry. The downside is that for that sort of ‘traditional’ training you either have to day release staff or they attend in the evening.

If you want qualifications delivered in the workplace at times to suit you we can do that. My own college is currently providing work based training in over 300 companies; nearly all of them are SMEs employing fewer than 250 people. Most of these companies pay nothing because the trainees are getting their first full qualification at Level 2 or above, usually an NVQ because that is the qualification the Government’s Learning and Skills Council wants us to deliver and the funding system reflects their national and their local priorities. NVQs are supposed to be devised by bodies dominated by employers and organisations representing their industry sectors so they should meet employer needs. If you are an SME in the professional services sector your team leaders and managers may even get free training leading to a full qualification awarded by a professional body such as the Chartered Institute of Management, but you will have to hurry as the funding for places are limited.

Do you want qualifications as an outcome of training courses, do you want NVQs? Usually we aren’t funded by the Learning and Skills Council for courses that don’t deliver full qualifications. If you want short courses delivering specific vocational training, vocational skills or soft skills, you will need to pay a ‘commercial rate’ without the Government or ESF subsidies.  Is this what you paying a lot of money to all those private training companies for?

Are you looking for a quick fix to solve your computer problems or training for that new software? A one week course you can send a team on next week which guarantees to increase sales turnover? Training to develop team working skills? Training delivered by an experienced specialist with significant experience in your own professional or specialist business sector who will come to your company and work with you and your staff one to one or in a small group for a few days? Are you short of skilled staff, what about a training company that can deliver pre employment training specific to your needs to a group of job ready candidates?

FE Colleges tender for this sort of work and some CBEB Colleges deliver some or all of the above to local blue chip companies as well as SMEs. Like any other business we also serve niche markets, when we don’t specialise in what you want we will tell you. We are highly regulated, focused on quality, inspected regularly by OfSTED, ALI, the LSC and audited frequently to make sure we deliver high quality services and offer value for money. We are local to you. We will deliver in a hotel, in your business or in CBEB premises in Colmore Row in the heart of the commercial district if you don’t like coming to colleges. Our trainers have up to date relevant industrial experience, without it you can’t become an NVQ assessor for example.

Coming back to politicians and statistics, I’ve listened to speeches about the FE sector ‘failing’ employers, not engaging with employers and how this is the fault of FE. As a sector we are encouraged by the current funding system to focus our attention on Government targets that concentrate on priorities such as equipping 16-19 year olds with skills, improving the basic skills of adults and making sure people with no qualifications get NVQs. We also have specialist employer engagement / business units that exist to serve employers. FE Colleges are also expected to specialise and become Centres of Vocational Excellence. The CBEB exists to meet local employer needs in business and professional services.

Have you used the services of a training company or FE recently, why or why not? It’s your shout, over to you.