New Partnership Heralds New Era of Cooperation and Development for Association of Learning P

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It was announced today that FE Careers and FE News have signed a partnership agreement with the Association of Learning Providers (ALP), who represent the UK’s work based learning providers.

FE Careers is the only job board in the UK that advertises vacancies from across the whole Further Education sector, advertising vacancies from Training Providers, FE Colleges, Charities, Awarding bodies, specialist FE Recruitment Agencies and Government quango’s. FE Careers and FE News were established in October 2004 and are specialist Further Education online service organisations. They regularly receive over 10,000 unique visitors and nearly 600,000 hits per month.

The partnership with the ALP will enable the 400 ALP members who represent Work Based Learning with both Training Providers and FE Colleges in the UK to take advantage of a discounted rate for advertising their vacancies on FE Careers. The partnership also extends to FE Careers sister site FE News, who provide news across the FE sector.

Forging Links, Forging Ahead

The Managing Director of FE Careers and FE News explains the benefits to ALP members and regular visitors to the websites: “We have been working for a long time to forge this partnership with the ALP. This partnership means that we will be able to offer a substantial discount to the ALP’s 400 members for their recruitment advertising with FE Careers. This will benefit our job seeking visitors, ensuring a long term advertising offering from Work Based Learning providers, offering job seekers a continued variety of job opportunities and enabling FE Careers to continue to be the leading Work Based Learning job board in the UK.

“FE Careers is unique as we offer job vacancies from across the sector that are very cost effective for the employer,” he continued. “As the FE sector is funded by the government purse, we strive to provide a cost effective advertising solution for our customers that not only stretches their budget, but proactively seeks candidates for their vacancies. Many of the ALP’s smaller members would struggle to stretch their budget to advertise their vacancies; this partnership offers a long term, highly cost effective recruitment advertising solution for these organisations.

This partnership will see members able to make the best use of their budget, therefore, and also allows them to be at the forefront of FE online. As Gavin said: “Our ALP partnership offers Work Based Learning providers an exceptionally effective solution. We offer an entire years advertising on FE Careers for less than a small one day advert in the national press. This is great news for ALP members, FE Careers job seekers and for the public purse”.

Raising Awareness

Gavin also goes on to explain the significance of the ALP and FE News partnership: “If you ask someone in the street, “What is Further Education?”, they will either not know, or say “something about a college”. Further Education encompasses all post 16 education, but not many people outside our industry realise that you can even gain a degree level qualification through work based learning. FE means so much more than college learning. There are approx 3,000 learning providers in the UK compared to 400 FE colleges.”

He also drew attention to the ongoing battle of FE News to transform public attitudes towards the sector, which is sometimes known as the “cinderella sector”. “FE News publishes articles from across the sector,” he said. “This agreement will ensure that we will be able to provide regular training provider articles for our readers. Work Based Learning is rarely in the news spot light, this agreement will hopefully reverse this.

“The majority of the news sources in the FE sector focus purely on colleges, but we want to offer our readers a wider perspective providing a true representation of the FE sector,” he continued. “As a part of the ALP partnership FE News will be providing a free monthly news service to ALP members, and due to FE News investment in new technology we can also provide a free “live RSS news wire” for ALP member websites. This partnership is great news for the FE industry. Work Based Learning has taken a couple of knocks recently, at last some real good news for the unsung heroes of the FE sector.”

Jethro Marsh

Welcome the new partnership in the FE Blog

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