In the recent employer training pilots, those erstwhile brokers Business Link, secured only 20 per cent of referrals, the vast majority coming from providers.
I am aware of no evidence of how many of these referrals were “new business”. However, the larger of my existing college contracts reported being approached by Business Link (oddly enough, not the smaller).
It seems that this will not be the case in the new national employer training programme (Train to Gain) - the successful broker will not be measured (and failed) by the number of referrals.
The new performance indicator will be on “relationships”. I am unclear what constitutes a relationship: I had always assumed that it required mutual benefit!
Talking of which, it seems that to be involved with the new programme we will have to share the meagre funding not only with the brokers but Centre for Excellence in Leadership and Lifelong Learning UK, too. Is the trough big enough?
Peter Sadler Principal Bicton college East Budleigh Budleigh Salterton Devon
