Tameside College Pumps Manchester Businesses with Higher Level Skills

Tameside College, a member of the Greater Manchester Strategic Alliance, has been singled out as a beacon of excellent employer engagement for its business led engineering programmes, which have been accepted into the new Training Quality Standard framework.

The Training Quality Standard is a means of assessing and comparing organisations who deliver training and development solutions to employers. More than 600 employers and 200 providers were interviewed and tested to assess their competence at delivering training for employers - only 26 providers were judged to have met the necessary levels of excellence.

One third of employers admit to finding difficulties when sourcing a new training provider. Tameside College’s status will further enhance their potential for successful engagement by proving to employers that the college has something to offer.

John McCall, Head of External Relations at Tameside College, said: “We realised that the funding streams for education institutions are changing. The Training and Quality Standard is part of our efforts to become more responsive and less reliant on traditional forms of funding. It is used as a business standard or charter mark. There’s only us in Greater Manchester who have got the New Standard so far.

“We are hoping it will create further change and make us even more employer focused. We expect it to be recognised by employers as a business kite mark. We will be the organisation that companies look to because they will know we can provide what they need.”

The college was granted the prestigious status after demonstrating a hugely impressive employer engagement portfolio – even surpassing other successful applicants. McCall said: “The employer feedback during our assessment was absolutely phenomenal. We were far and away ahead of anyone else investigated - in terms of ratings from businesses we have worked with. When compared to the national average for employer ratings we are very far ahead. We were off the scale, in fact.

“There’s a large manufacturing industry in Tameside so it is logical that we have a strong employer engagement strategy in this sector. We have a very strong network of employers we have worked with locally and nationally. “

Mono Pumps - a leading manufacturer of progressing cavity pumps, grinders, screens and packaged solutions for a wide variety of industrial applications - are a multi-national company whose European base is Manchester. Gareth Thomas has worked closely with Tameside College on a number of bespoke and off-the-shelf training courses.

He said: “We tend to use private training providers for generic training – basic management courses for example. But private training companies cannot provide the technical skills and bespoke training we need - not for a reasonable price anyway. Tameside College offer a service that, from a private business perspective, is ideal.”

Mono Pumps engineer Paula Edwards completed an Engineering Apprenticeship with Tameside College. She praised the cooperation between her employers and Tameside, lauding the benefits for her and her fellow employees.

“The company have now funded me to go on to study for a degree at the Open University,” she said: “As part of my engineering degree I actually got in touch with my old tutor from Tameside – I studied there for five years while working at Mono Pumps and they have always been great.”