IITT Chief Executive vows to clamp down on 'self-funder' training market
Institute of IT Training chief executive Colin Steed vowed to clean-up the self-funder training market on the BBC TV's consumer watchdog programme Inside Out this week.
Appearing on Inside Out on BBC 1 on Monday evening, Steed said that the Institute had launched a campaign to protect the public from the widespread practice of promising jobs and hard sales techniques that are plaguing the industry and giving the commercial training market a bad name.
"We get very few complaints about our commercial providers but receive many complaints from the public about mis-selling and broken promises from this area of the market," said Steed. "We are extremely concerned that the rate of these complaints are growing by the week. The market is worth multi-millions of pounds and some of the training providers in the market are earning fortunes at the expense of the public."
Steed said that the large majority of complaints are about being misled about promises of job guarantees, promises of huge salaries once qualified and not being able to receive a part refund of the course fees when the individual is unable to complete the course through personal circumstances.
"This is affecting those who are unemployed or are looking to re-train after being made redundant," explained Steed. "The promise of a job with huge salaries are tempting people to part with thousands of pounds to these training providers. Just today we received a call from a young person who had parted with £10,000."
Steed explained that the Institute has formed a steering group of training providers in order to compile a rigorous accreditation programme for the self-funder market. "The new accreditation programme will still encompass the quality of the training delivery, but will provide a strong focus on the training providers' sales processes," explained Steed. "We shall set up the scheme so that the buyer is protected against mis-selling in much the same way as the FSA has cleaned up the financial services industry."
Steed reiterated that he wants the Government to help him in the campaign. "The Learning & Skills Council (LSC) should be particularly interested in joining up with the Institute as the LSC Career Development Loans are used in the majority of cases. We need them to work with us on this campaign so that, for example, only those providers who are Institute Accredited will receive CDLs from them," said Steed. "In that way we can make a real difference and clean-up this market.
"We are making every effort to get to the right people in the LSC, but our efforts to date have been fruitless."
The TV programme can be downloaded from the BBC TV website:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/realmedia/insideout/bb/insideout_180906_16x9_bb.ram
Note that it requires RealPlayer in order to receive the streamed video.
ENDS