Digital Print Training Academy |

DPTA Digital Print Training Academy We have been asked to poll the whole CSN readership to identify the skills training we require to move our industry forward. Proskills already have a list of qualifications for the print industry and are eager to work on the specific needs of the UK's 5000 frontline print shops. Your help is required in compiling a training needs analysis for our part of the print services industry.
Completing a prepared form will only give an order of options already pre conceived and our requirement is in part to identify real skill shortages. This is where we want to start with a blank shopping list rather than make our industry fit in with existing modules of learning. Yes we are special and need to measure ourselves at levels we have achieved and targets that we want to aspire too.
Starting with an appraisal of our existing skills and forecasting a training requirement will give us all an idea of the prospectus. The delivery of each stage of the course and the entry levels are all down to you as we will not all fit into a tailor made solution. Your input is essential to produce a print programme we can all buy into.
Last month Ray Snowden, the project director for the National Skills academy, accompanied Richard Moore, manager of Proskills and Print and Paper industry Champion, to a meeting in Brighton to discuss supporting our DPTA training initiative. A start was made on how to drive skills standards within our part of the print industry through courses and qualifications and an agreement that identifying our needs was paramount.
Following last month's initial publishing of our objectives, offers of help have arrived from all sectors of the print ind ustry. Certain suppliers have offered resources and sponsorship which we will be allocating over the coming months.
A real requirement for an e-learning course has been made apparent from the response of our readers. Residential learning is just so expensive and often leads to a detrimental decision on training. We need to deliver our courses free of charge as a triple cost option is not viable. As we have had explained to us, every shop already pays once for the student, twice for the cover of that employee when training, and the third cost of the course is often the deciding negative factor.
All good feedback as it will be pointless designing courses that will not be delivered.
An entry level and evaluation session will be best served remotely with options for more focused on-site training if required. A DPTA remote learning course will deliver a programme to learn at everyone's own pace. The course can be followed from work or home and logged into any day of the week at any time of day. Participation is the key; all will be welcome and can proceed at any pace with the content, that we all practice each day.
Support will be available maybe by email mentor or a chat room? You decide it is your industry's future. We will be working on some demo courses for your appraisal and of course we need your course requirements ASAP.
To restate our objectives from last month's launch; our aim is to attract all instant print personnel of all ages and digital technology awareness as there is a real need for retraining some of our longer standing readers. Also new start trainees with a later option to look at apprenticeships in print will be catered for. As NVQs are designed to be transportable through different, but associated industries, we will have places for trainees going on into careers in PR, advertising and print industry sales.
We look forward to receiving instructions from the CSN readership as to the required content for our new training prospectus. Together we can strive to deliver our new industry training standard, DPTA. As an industry we need to make printing an attractive proposal for a modern career and compete with other IT and design apprenticeships.
All ideas welcome. dpta@copyshopnews.co.uk
|