Centre of Excellence Achievement for Suffolk College - 21 March 2005

Suffolk College staff are today celebrating national support for the setting up a Centre of Vocational Excellence (CoVE) in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) following an announcement from the Learning and Skills Council. The facility, to be known as I-CoVE, will form part of the Colleges successful new technology institute - the Suffolk Institute of Technology - and will offer a wide range of new course provision in ICT in response to employer needs. Commenting on the success Dr Peter Funnell, assistant principal (Learning Development) said:

"Our entry into the CoVE network is a major achievement and reflects national recognition of both the quality of current College provision and the relevance of our proposals for the future. There is overwhelming evidence that the development of the Suffolk and regional economies is being constrained by the lack of skills in ICT. I-CoVE, working in collaboration with the Suffolk Institute of Technology and other areas of the College, will address this skills gap in new and exciting ways using new technologies to support individuals and businesses develop and contribute to economic success".

The I-CoVE will benefit from a £400,000 investment from the Learning and Skills Council and will offer high quality, specialist and accessible learning programmes to individuals and employers and provide targeted full cost short courses some of which will be delivered through the Internet.

"Employers have played a key role in the development of this proposal, influencing both the scope and direction of the proposal and the detailed curriculum to be offered", said Dr Funnell. "We will now be working to urgently establish the Centre and will be recruiting our first students in September".

ENDS

NOTES FOR EDITORS

For further information please contact:

Tracey Bailey, Promotions & Information Centre Manager

Tel: 01473 296520

Email: traceybailey@suffolk.ac.uk

Dr Peter Funnell, Assistant Principal (Learning Development)

Tel: 01473 296535

Email: peterfunnell@suffolk.ac.uk

CoVE stands for Centre of Vocational Excellence. CoVEs are a new initiative (the first were launched in September 2001) and they form a key part of the Learning and Skills Council’s strategy to improve skills for employment and national competitiveness. They are characterised by the very high standard of specialist learning and skills development they offer as well as their strong links between “providers” - such as FE colleges and other training providers - and employers, business partners and the community at large. Each CoVE offers training in a particular vocational area, including new and traditional areas of work, and is designed to meet the skills needs of employers in that sector and in the wider economy.

For more information see http://cove.lsc.gov.uk/index.cfm

3) The UK currently has a total IT workforce of about 1.2 million, which is estimated to grow at between 1.5 and 2.2% per annum. In addition there are a further 20 million workers outside the core IT workforce whose employment involves and requires ICT skills. The east of England is the 4th largest regional employer of IT professionals with 8% of the UK IT workforce. In Suffolk 14,457 workers are directly employed in the ICT sector. Approximately 207,500 of Suffolk’s workforce across all sectors are IT users.

There are 1,393 companies operating in the ICT sector in Suffolk although the distinction between the ICT sector and others is perhaps increasingly erroneous as ICT professionals are employed across all sectors. The majority of core sector activity is clustered around the BT Exact research facility at Adastral Park and within the adjacent County town of Ipswich. Sector activity is also significant along the A14 corridor between Ipswich and Cambridge. The Suffolk Development Agency (SDA) estimate that within the Ipswich to Cambridge ‘hi-tech’ corridor as a whole, the high technology sector accounts for 44,700 jobs within 4,200 businesses.

Although Suffolk is home to a number of large ICT businesses such as BT Exact, Anglia Telecom and GeTech, the majority of ICT enterprises in the County can be defined as SMEs and micro-businesses with 90% employing less than 26 people. This is characteristic of the County’s economy as a whole where 92.9% of the working population are employed in enterprises with less than 25 employees. Over 90% of ICT businesses in Suffolk are UK owed. In the last 5 years there have been 515 new ICT businesses started in the County which suggests that the average number of start-ups in this sector within Suffolk is approximately 103 per year.

99% of Suffolk ICT businesses questioned in May 2004 in research commissioned by the East of England Development Agency (EEDA) anticipated that the markets they served, and by implication their own enterprises, would grow. However, this research also highlighted a number of existing barriers to the growth and sustainability of the ICT sector within the County. Suffolk ICT businesses highlighted the availability of “skilled staff” as the greatest potential barrier to growth, with the related issue of “access to training” cited as the third most significant barrier (behind access to “finance”).

Issued by Promotions 21 March 2005