AimHigher

Bit of an eventful week with the wind causing everyone to be evacuated from the Beaconside campus on Thursday afternoon. Fortunately I was in Wolverhampton on the Friday for an AimHigher event as the campus was closed until Monday. The AimHigher event had a keynote speech by Stephen Gardner (Director of Work based learning National LSC) and the questions asked by the group raised the same issues as we have been hearing within this project, problems with getting employer involvement, issues with funding for employers, businesses too small to afford to send employees to be trained, employers scared of losing highly trained staff, students have a lack of understanding progression from non traditional level 1, 2, and 3, students reluctant to raise training with employer for fear they should be seen to want to leave. Some of these issues are already being addressed with websites such as AimHigher's getupgo and the alps sites. I think it's going to be important to link to these external sites to help guide learners, and potential learners. Perhaps there should be a FAQ area in the portal for each type of person we are trying to help with links to other sites.