Improve employee access to higher education
The issue
Universities and colleges providing higher education need to engage strategically with employers and develop flexible ways to deliver courses.
What you can do
The 2011 government white paper, Putting students at the heart of higher education, encourages universities to engage with employers to accredit or “kitemark” courses.
Digital technologies can help you to effectively manage relationships with employers and their employees (and potential learners), as well as to deliver courses flexibly.
Our Regional Support Centres can offer tailored advice and guidance to colleges. Most have work-based learning advisers.
Is your institution ready for work-based-learning?
Use our work-based learning maturity toolkit to discover how well prepared you are to deliver effective work-based learning.
Manage your employer relationships effectively
If you’re engaging with a number of different employers, it’s important to try to manage your relationships systematically.
Engagement with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can be particularly difficult. We’ve developed ACUMEN to share tools and experiences developed by projects we’ve funded.
Open up your course information
Businesses and students will find your course information more easily if you use the XCRI standard which facilitates the sharing of course-related information between organisations.
Case studies
We’ve funded a major programme of work to develop tools and advice to help institutions with different aspects of work-based learning. These include:
- a toolkit to enable learning providers and employers to develop new courses collaboratively
- course material and delivery tailored to the needs of work-based learners through e-portfolios
- a system to accredit an employee’s prior learning, incorporate it into a learning framework and translate into HE level qualifications.