A brief history of our Learning Centre

June 2006 Dave Walton and Andy Sorton came to Work time learning sessions to talk about opening a Learning Centre in Leeds Mail centre. They also asked at that time if anyone would be interested in becoming a ULR, twenty people applied for a ULR post; eight people were selected to complete the ULR 1 course which took place in September 2006.

A room was allocated and ten PC’s were given to us by Royal mail as part of the “Royal Mail Way” which was to encourage learning at work.

A bid was put in to purchase 6 Laptops with a view to providing outlying DO’s with courses as well as the mail centre.

September 2006: The courses commenced, the provider was Bradford College; they initially put on a 6 week Basic IT course, which was very successful. This ran over the three shifts. Twenty five people completed the course and were awarded an accreditation from Bradford College.

January 2007 we advertised again, this time offering Basic and Intermediate IT, Spanish for beginners (all free) and ECDL.(Part one) at a cost of £35. But this time, to stop time wasters we decided to charge a returnable deposit, as long as 80% of the course was attended.

February 2007 The Basic, Intermediate IT and Spanish all went smoothly and were well attended. 

The only  issue was  with the ECDL, was that Bradford College took so long in issuing the Log books, the course started on the 21^st Feb 07 and students did not receive their log books until 13^th June 07, by this time a lot of students had lost interest, and the numbers dwindled.

We also had issues with the lack of a printer in the room, which meant going back and forth to personnel, who were not too happy with ULR’s coming in and out for printouts.

July 2007, as we had troubles with completing Module 7 of the ECDL as Royal mail do not support “Outlook Express” and would not pay for the software to be installed. Bradford College decided they could no longer provide the course as we were stuck with outdated PC’s and this was no longer financially viable for them. We had to return all deposits.

November 2007, a further bid for funding was put in by Andy Sorton to the ULF to purchase ten brand new PC’s and a printer, for the learning room; this funding was matched by the Leeds No1 Amal Branch.

February 2008 funding was successful and the PC’s arrived, we were now in a position to commence talks with Bradford College once again, but unfortunately by this time their funding had been changed and the Tutors were no longer available, so we had to start looking elsewhere for a provider.

After talking to various colleges we decided to go with Park Lane College in Leeds as they seemed very professional, we had decided to run “Learning at work” day and use this as an enrolment day, Park Lane promised foreign language taster sessions, Indian hand massage, and Tutors on hand to speak to.

May 2007 Learning at Work day, two tutors turned up, no Indian hand massage or anything that was previously promised by them, and when the Tutors spoke to people they could not explain the syllabus of the courses on offer, which caused some confusion for all concerned.

Prior to the courses starting Dave Walton and myself visited Park lane to negotiate the price and start times for the courses, they had decided not to offer Clait or Clait + to start with, just a basic ICT skills for life course, and they were very vague about the content of the course, so it was impossible to explain to potential students what they were signing up for.

Initially, they had also promised to get the courses up and running over the summer period to keep the momentum going from Learning at work day, but they then decided that the end of September would be better as they were short of Tutors over the summer.

September 2008 finally the courses started; with hindsight it would have been better to collect the deposits when the students enrolled, not on the first day, as a few dropped out due to changing commitments.

October 2008 the courses have been successfully completed, but we are currently awaiting a meeting with Bradford College once again, as they may be in a position to offer us courses. At the time of writing this, Park Lane College have not been in touch regarding any feedback or certificates for the students who completed the courses.

Bev Greenwood Lead ULR

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