Bournville College’s success in helping individuals back into the workplace has been shown through the success of the latest adult class on the Business IT Skills course.
The programme is designed for students wishing to pursue a career in office, secretarial or administration work and gives students the opportunity to learn a variety of different IT applications – formally called the ‘Back to Work’ programme. As well as looking into IT, text processing, mailmerge and speed keying it also helps individuals with their employability skills, with CV preparation, simulated interviews and a work placement.
Jo Saunders, Assistant Curriculum Manager – IT commented ‘The class this year have excelled so much. Before they started the course many had limited office skills and lacked confidence in the workplace. Now that we have completed the course a number have secured permanent jobs, work experience and voluntary work. They have grown so much whilst on the course and it has been a delight to be a part of it’ reflected Jo.
Marsha Ebanks, from Redditch carried on with her part-time cleaning job whilst enrolled onto the course. During the course Marsha has grown in confidence and now has a new direction in her chosen career ‘Before I started the course I had no confidence and did not know what I wanted to do. Completing the course has given me a new lease of life and I have gained so many qualifications and made a lot of new friends. I now know what career path I want to take, have even started job hunting and it’s all down to making that first step of going on the course with Bournville College’, reflected Marsha.
Mary Robins, from Bournville, left her job working as a funeral director before enrolling onto the course ‘The Back to Work (Business IT Skills) course gave me the confidence to seek voluntary work; this in turn has given me a permanent place of work. The success that I have achieved is all down to the tutors urging me on and to ‘achieve’ and believe in myself – that has taken me from a very bad time in my life to what I have now and that is, confidence. Our tutors also encouraged us to take the opportunity to achieve our basic skills in English and Maths, for those of us that have taken that opportunity we have gained equivalent to a ‘C’ in GCSE’, added Mary.
If you would like to find out more on the range of adult courses available please visit www.bournville.ac.uk or call the Information & Advice Centre on 0121 477 1300.
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