_“ We are delighted to announce the appointment of a Group Managing Director to Aspire Achieve Advance Ltd. Keith Holmes will join the business and take on this exciting new leadership role from 1st November. With the growth of our apprenticeship academies and the increasing number of our clients demanding adult apprenticeship training we are strengthening our senior team with a Group Managing Director role. Keith has been operating in senior roles for Protocol Education, Select Education, Adecco and Pertemps. He brings a wealth of experience and professionalism to Aspire Achieve Advance Ltd and will take on a leadership role across our academies and Adult skills. He will be spending time out and about meeting clients, employers, college partners and our own staff and students over the next few weeks. He is very much looking forward to joining the business and brings enthusiasm and commitment to help the business in its’ next phase.”
The Directors and Chairman of Aspire Achieve Advance Ltd.
Keith says: “ I am very much looking forward to working with everyone at 3As and helping to deliver quality apprenticeships and training for all of our colleges and clients. 3As is an exciting and fast moving business, evidenced by its’ growth and strategic relationships with key partners. I intend to continue to drive for high quality performance across the business and continue the successful relationships with Colleges and employers.”
_3AAA is delighted to announce that we have recently completed a further consultancy project for a large college in England, focussed on business development and workbased learning. Delivered personally by Di McEvoy – Robinson and Peter Marples, this project is leading to significant further work and the development of new methods of working for the sector.
Di commented ‘ our College partners are looking at ways of doing things differently. There is no doubt there are significant opportunities to engage with employers of all sizes, but the sector needs to respond differently to capitalise on these new opportunities. We are now working on the next stage of this project – an added benefit is that all of the consultancy fees go straight into our bursary scheme for young people’
_With the recently announced statistic that over 20% of young people are not in employment, education or training, 3AAA is delighted that over the past twelve months we have sourced over 750 new jobs for our apprentices in our academies
Our innovative model, which matches learners to job opportunities that our employment advisors have identified through on going dialogue with employers is paying real dividends.
Peter Marples, director at 3AAA commented ‘ these are all new jobs – we have achieved commitment from employers to look at new employment strategies, with apprenticeships being at the forefront of this approach. We are delighted in these difficult economic times that we have been able to generate so many job opportunities for young people and to get them on their career ladder. Our objective is to more than double the number of jobs we generate in the next 12 months – 2000 is our objective and we are investing approaching £1m in our teams to do just that !.’
A brand new Apprenticeship in IT skills is helping one London based IT support business to grow its own workforce in response to a shortage of skilled IT personnel.
Edgware based IT company, COBRA, who are an IT support and solutions specialist for local SMEs in and around North London, have taken advantage of funding support from the National Apprenticeship Service to employ nineteen year old Dean Beckett as the company’s first recruit on the Advanced Apprenticeship in IT.
Developed by the National IT Partnership, part of the Microsoft Academy, in association with the computing trade association, CompTIA, the seven month training programme is being delivered in partnership with the College of Haringey, Enfield and North London.
Leading to a Level 3 national qualification with a pathway to significant continuing professional development opportunities, Apprentices are trained to strip down and repair computers, change faulty parts, troubleshoot and diagnose software and hardware faults on a PC and understand the basics of a server network.
According to e-skills, the Sector Skills Council for the IT and Telecoms industries, the demand for employees with specialist computing skills has outstripped supply for the first time in two years. Vacancies for ICT staff rose to 101,000 positions in the third quarter of 2010, while the number of ‘ready candidates’ declined to just over 100,000. The increased demand reflected the fact that ICT staff are less likely to be unemployed than workers in other sectors. Unemployed ICT workers fell to 3.1% compared with 8.3% for the workforce as a whole.
Responding to the challenges faced by businesses, COBRA has developed a ‘Pick n’ Mix’ approach to IT. This provides clients with a completely bespoke and organic approach, as opposed to more traditional ‘boxed in’ IT support packages.
Commenting on the new Apprenticeship, David Share, Managing Director, COBRA, said:
“Succession planning is crucial for any business and we see Apprenticeships as a foundation of the UK’s future economy. We want to develop home grown talent and skills over a sustained period, so we can recoup the rewards that skills investment will bring. It’s our intention to offer more opportunities to young people.”
Research has shown that companies investing in training are 2.5 times more likely to survive during an economic downturn or recession. In a nation-wide poll carried out by Populus in 2009, the overwhelming majority of employers (92%) felt that apprentices made a valuable contribution to the business within six months of them completing their apprenticeship or earlier. The survey also found that businesses believed that investing in apprenticeships made them more competitive (80%), provided higher overall productivity (76%) and contributed to lower staff turnover (80%).
A new Accounting Academy has launched this week with the recruitment of 27 accounting apprentices. Studying at the Smallford Campus in St Albans the apprentices are now attending interviews with local Businesses ranging from Industry, to Public Sector to Accounting Practices.
Commenting on the group Elaine Kelt Academy Manager says “We are delighted to have started this week as planned. We have 27 young adults raring to go!”
One of the group Becky Heart says “It’s a very unique opportunity that allows me to get both practical experience and obtain a recognised qualification”.
A new Accounting Academy has launched this week with the recruitment of 27 accounting apprentices. Studying at the Smallford Campus in St Albans the apprentices are now attending interviews with local Businesses ranging from Industry, to Public Sector to Accounting Practices.
Commenting on the group Elaine Kelt Academy Manager says “We are delighted to have started this week as planned. We have 27 young adults raring to go!”
One of the group Becky Heart says “It’s a very unique opportunity that allows me to get both practical experience and obtain a recognised qualification”.
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Alan Cooper, MD of the Nuneaton Estate Agency that bears his name is justly proud of his daughter who has just won a major award in the industry they both love.
In October last year, Charlotte Cooper (17) decided to follow her father’s footsteps into estate agency. Whilst Alan of course wanted to help his daughter in her career, his standards are high, and he advised her to seek a professional qualification at the outset. Little did Charlotte know that within six months she would be the talk of the industry!
Charlotte secured a place with the Bloom Apprenticeship Academy for Estate and Letting Agents in Birmingham. This is an intensive six-month course which blends formal training at their training centre with in-the-field assessment with an employer – usually sourced by Bloom but in this case the family firm had a place available.
During the course, apprentices take the most rigorous of exams in every aspect of good practice in estate agency culminating in the highly regarded NFoPP (National Federation of Property Professionals) Technical Award in the Sale of Residential Property plus an ABBE NVQ Level 3 Diploma demonstrating vocational competency. By April Charlotte was one of the first to pass these with flying colours and had been accepted as an Associate Member of the Guild of Professional Estate Agents, and a Member of the National Association of Estate Agents with the prestigious licenced membership status.
But the icing on the cake was this month when Charlotte was awarded ‘UK Young Estate Agent of the Year 2011’ at the Property Professional Show Awards Ceremony at the Grosvenor House hotel in London where she received the award from BBC’s The Apprentice star Jamie Lester.
Proud father Alan Cooper said “Charlotte was exactly one month old when I opened the office in June 1993, but little did I know that not only would she make me so proud before her 18th birthday, but also that I’d have the Estate Agent of the year working in my office! A fantastic result all round and I’d like to thank the Bloom Apprenticeship Academy for making this happen. I’d encourage any young person considering an alternative to university to look at the apprenticeship route to a good qualification and early career success.”
Charlotte and Alan Cooper can be contacted at www.alan-cooper.co.uk or on 024 7634 9336 .
www.Bloombi.co.uk
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