The Princess Royal visits The Training Foundation to present Queen's Award for Enterprise: Innovation
HRH the Princess Royal visited the Coventry training centres of The Training Foundation today to present the Foundation with the Queen's Award for Enterprise: Innovation.
In attendance were leading figures from the training and education space, including the Chief Executives of UfI, the Adult Learning Inspectorate, the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement and various Sector Skills Councils.
This was a particularly newsworthy event because The Training Foundation is the first organisation to be awarded the UK's most prestigious business accolade for a training skills qualification in the 40-year history of the Queen's Awards for Enterprise.
The Trainer Assessment Programme (TAP®) has been adopted by more than 1,000 organisations since its launch in 1998 with more than 10,000 trainers across all strands of the public and private sectors now certified to deliver and design training to its standards.
The Innovation Award recognises the creation and continuous development of TAP® by The Training Foundation since 1998 and its proven success in raising the quality of training.
What is the Trainer Assessment Programme, TAP® ?
TAP® is revolutionising how training is being designed and delivered in the classroom, and how learners are being supported in learning centres and in the workplace. The basic premise is that, as in other professions, the skills of all professional trainers and those supporting learning should be measurable and assessable to best-practice standards.
TAP® is setting new high standards for trainers to achieve.
Achievement of certification requires successful assessment of the trainer's skills against objective, best-practice models. These models focus on making training more learner centred and participative.
TAP® is also uniquely addressing the training needs of the great majority of trainers who are not primarily trainers but are subject matter experts with occasional training responsibility. By empowering them to deliver interactive, participative training, TAP® has converted thousands from 'presenters' to real trainers.
It works!!
Surveys of trainers that have converted to the TAP® methodology have consistently shown huge improvements in learner feedback and results. Following two surveys of over 1,500 TAP®-certified trainers;
• 96% said it had made "a significant difference" to the way they trained
• 90% said they used the TAP® methodology "most or all of the time"
• 87% said they received "better feedback from delegates at the end of the course"
As a result of the programme's ability to ensure high quality, consistent learning in the workplace, many organisations have adopted TAP® and require all training to be carried out to the TAP® standard.
The NHS and the DfES refer to it as 'a de facto standard in the UK' on their websites. More than sixty of the FTSE 100 companies now employ TAP®-certified trainers, many also having had senior staff trained to assess to the TAP® standards, ensuring the ongoing consistency of their trainers' performance.
Nick Mitchell, founder and Chief Executive of The Training Foundation, said; "We are thrilled that Princess Anne has been willing to present our Award personally. It's not often that training gets into the spotlight and this Award will help us focus attention on the fundamental requirement of any effective learning programme; the skills of the trainer.'
"Research shows that around 90% of classroom learning effectiveness comes from the trainer's critical softer skills rather than subject knowledge, yet traditional trainer certifications have made no attempt to model these or ensure that trainers can use them. Far too much training has been lecturing, not training."
"In the past, subject matter knowledge was often the only requirement for someone to be called on to train others.
This was unfair to everyone and not least the learners who often gained little in terms of knowledge and skills transfer. Since 1998, we have seen more than 10,000 trainers and others supporting learning undertake intensive short-courses in the TAP® methodologies, be assessed to its standards, and achieve certification.
Many of these have asked "Why didn't I know about this years go? All this time I've been lecturing, I've never been a real trainer!"
'If we extrapolate the number of individuals that are now receiving better quality training from those 10,000 trainers, we can see that several million people in the UK are now benefiting directly or indirectly each year from the TAP® programme.
This is fantastically rewarding for us and is why we feel we are on a mission. But there's still a long way to go. We have only scratched the surface. The next ten years should be exciting!