Vital training could be lost as agency probe looms closer
Thursday 20th August 2009, 2:29PM BST.
THE States must not cut back on a vital training, according to a leading figure in the business community.
Gillian Gorvel, chairwoman of Guernsey’s Chartered Institute of Personnel Development, said the Guernsey Training Agency University Centre was essential to the local human resources community.
The Commerce and Employment Department has announced it will review the funding and range of courses offered by the university-accredited institution.
‘Up-skilling the workforce in a downturn can create an effective, efficient, engaged workforce which can provide the single greatest competitive advantage to any organisation. It ensures they are prepared and suitably agile to respond when the economic upturn arrives,’ said Ms Gorvel.
She said the CIPD group hoped the States was not mistakenly following the trend, often seen during a turbulent economic climate, to cut the training budget – in this case the GTA.
‘It has built up an extensive understanding of the HR profession in particular, resulting in a very close working partnership with the local CIPD committee.
‘They have been tireless in seeking to provide the very best professional study and learning opportunities through the programmes and seminars they deliver and in so doing have helped transform the working landscape for our profession,’ she said.
The group believes any reduction in funding would impact on the professional training and development options of local HR people.
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This behometh needs to come under scrutiny and the reasons are partly in the article that seeks to defend it. For too long we have failed to debate what the role of this quango is, how it interacts with the College of FE and the private sector training providers since whenever a States member picks up the annual report they are told to vote through any budget increase as if it is some sacred cow. Like most private sector businesses we are deluged each week with emails about upcoming courses and we know that many will not take place due to uneconomic numbers. After so many years of this we have never been asked for our opinions on what should be offered and the doorstop of a glossy prospectus leads one to suppose the scattergun approach of offering everything so that no-one can claim they have not been addressed is the default policy. “Courses to suit everybody” is their claim. Guernsey used to have a number of private sector training companies and consultants and good links with UK providers managed by the private sector – it is obvious to anyone who takes an interest that “going it alone” is not really an option for the enterprising private sector provider when he is competing on a sloping playing field. The hugely subsidised costs of the TA admin (I counted 17 faces in the “team” on their website and remember these are all admin – not teachers earning their living) and its mighty marketing endorsed by Training Managers (see above) who find it easy to “tick a box” means that anyone who wishes to say run an independent course on say “maths for stockbrokers” will find it a struggle. And so they give up. Let the TA focus on what it is good at – presumably extensive courses linked to moderated exams with input from academic institutions – since, what a surprise, our Chief Exec “retired” from Bournemouth Uni. (Are we paying BU or do they pay us to run their St Peter Port campus?) Jersey keeps this stuff under the oontrol of its Education Dept and we see enough Jersey training companies coming over here to realise that the climate in the private sector is healthy. Of course HR managers love the Agency – it offers subsidised training and who wants to pay the commercial rate? – but you cannot in all honesty scrimp on portakabins and leaking roofs in schools while being too nervous to ask if the local fund manager is paying the right amount for his training.
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Ichsaz
You clearly have a sound understanding of the TA and its agency function.
What many forget is that the TA was originally set up as a body that would provide unbiased advice on courses.
That unbiased role soon disappeared when the Agency starting selling courses, many of which were identical to those provided by the CFE.
Sadly, the conflict between the then heads of the CFE and the Agency did nothing but help create an empire that has numerous administrators and is merely an agent for course providers many of whom charge very high fees.
If the CFE and the TA had been able to work together before the present head of the TA was appointed, then I believe Guernsey would have benefited from the cooperation as would the students through lower fees.
What many of the TA supporters don’t know or want to know is of the numerous approaches the CFE had in the late 1990s from UK universities wanting to work with the CFE in providing courses such as MBA’s First degrees where students could spend the first and perhaps second year in Guernsey before going to the UK host university to complete their bachelor degrees.
There were also approaches from universities to the CFe who wanted to provide conversion courses where those who had completed HNC courses in Guernsey to go on to HND or degree status.
The silly, stupid infighting between the Education office and the CFE and later TA meant that hardly any of these initiatives came to fruition. Lost was the advantage of having tutors based in Guernsey as well as those in the universities.
Where the TA is to be congratulated is its marketing, to make capital out of the squabbles, not always to the advantage of the Guernsey student, either academically nor financially.
Almost everything the TA has dine had been offered first, or carried out at the CFE, and often, many years before.
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I fear I have a rather nasty way of thinking when these learned people almost demand that what ever is announced or altered are in fact. a big fright for themselves.
They are the ones who will lose out.
With reduction in funding means there is no need for them; It is the Islanders to decide what is good or bad for the Island
The people are the FORCE. and by heck I hope they stand firm against these demanding individuals.
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Stephen – I had refrained from commenting upon the history of the relationship between the TA and the CFE and the Education Dept but you have only reinforced what we “outsiders” have heard for years. It is interesting that the Training Agency in its history refrains from mentioning that there was originally a two-headed concept: the Finance Training Agency and the Guernsey Training Agency. At the time that the GFSC was instrumental in starting the agency there was little in the way of formal qualis in offshore finance sector and so providing a way of getting staff into doing qualis rather than “coasting” in their jobs was a good thing. As you say, it is one thing to be a “facilitator” but when you offer “everything” at a subsidised price you become the only show in town. A few years ago I was talking to someone on the phone I was doing some business with in the UK and I said it would be easy to meet and have a drink since I could see he was running a course the next week in Guernsey – after some pause for thought they recollected that they had been tapped by the TA to give their profiles and course outline a year ago and had not heard back. So we concluded the course was not actually running! Although some people say a review is too expensive and this agency must be doing a power of good because the numbers are big one is led to question how it creates its catalogue and how you sort out the things is does really well from things that other providers could do at no cost to the States. I have no problem with keeping an educated workforce to differentiate ourselves but there are many ways of influencing this that the States control and they could be imaginative in these tough times.
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Ichsaz
Talking of wasting money on buying in courses I was in Frossard House some years ago and there was a course running on Basic Letter Writing. It was bought in from the UK!!
This at a time when the CFE had a very successful letter writing course.
The political goings on re the CFE and the TA and the administrators at the Education office has served to develop the admin empire of the TA, has cost the tax payer much more than the money supposedly lost in Fallagate.
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