Learning Light prompts The Safety Train to gain NCFE accreditation

ST ALBANS, ENGLAND, November 05, 2010 (Press-News.org) The Safety Train, a company which operates an e-learning training portal aimed at covering all aspects of health & safety training, has been granted an NCFE bespoke quality licence - making it one of the UK's first e-learning providers to be accredited in this way.

"The NCFE licence accredits our course content," said Jonathan Blythe, The Safety Train's Business Development Director. "At present, we're not aware of any other e-learning provider that has this accredited status."

Jonathan went on to explain, "The Safety Train grew from a need to provide distance learning in health and safety-related subjects - principally because it was proving difficult to arrange classroom-based courses to suit the diaries of a large number of delegates who were based throughout the UK."

"Our answer was to form The Safety Train and provide the training via e-learning materials dealing with social care, office health and safety and personal development. These e-learning materials are delivered via streaming video over the web and/or via mobile phone apps - and they offer a low cost to competency.

"Learning Light, a company which focuses on promoting the use of e- learning and learning technologies, advised us to apply for NCFE accreditation because they were certain that the high quality of our courses' content would meet the NCFE's accreditation criteria - which proved to be the case."

NCFE advisor Helen Gregory, who assesses The Safety Train - in terms of how it produces content for its video-delivered courses; how its learning materials interact with learners, and how it measures the learning outcomes - commented: "I was impressed with the enthusiasm together with professionalism of the team from The Safety Train.

"There is no doubt about the commitment of this team towards the NCFE Investing in Quality licence. There is a clear drive to get the course right and I look forward to working with The Safety Train further."

Learning Light's Operations Director, David Patterson, commented: "The Safety Train getting accreditation from NCFE illustrates how the training industry is waking up to the potential and power of e-learning. After many years, face-to-face trainers - whom NCFE has been dealing with for about 150 years - are coming to view e-learning not as a threat to their jobs but as a technology to be embraced and exploited."

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Notes for Editors
About the NCFE
Based in Newcastle upon Tyne, NCFE is a national awarding body. Awarding bodies design and award qualifications which recognise the skills, knowledge and understanding achieved by a learner at a particular level and in a particular subject. It is a registered educational charity and a company limited by guarantee. Its charitable aim is 'to promote and advance the education and training of young persons and adults'.

NCFE is recognised as an awarding body by the qualification regulators for England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The regulators are the Office of the Qualifications and Examinations Regulator (Ofqual) in England, the Department for Children, Education, Lifelong Learning and Skills (DCELLS) in Wales and the Council for Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment (CCEA) in Northern Ireland

NCFE can trace its record of working with colleges and other providers back to its founding organisation, the Northern Union of Mechanics' Institutes (NUMI), established in 1848. From 1920, the Northern Counties Technical Examinations Council (NCTEC or 'Northern Counties' as it became known) supplanted NUMI and, supported by nine Northern Local Education Authorities, provided examinations for technical colleges, schools and other centres for over 60 years until 1981.

In 1981, the Northern Advisory Council for Further Education (NACFE), which was established in 1947 to co-ordinate further education provision throughout the nine LEAs, merged with the NCTEC to become the Northern Council for Further Education. When the further education sector was incorporated (made independent of the government) in the early 1990s, the company felt the old name was incompatible with its new national focus and has since then been identified simply as NCFE with the letters no longer being an acronym.

NCFE's IIQ licence is designed to give formal recognition to organisations' bespoke programmes. The licence is based on six Quality Statements which provide a quality assurance framework for the development, delivery and evaluation of your learning activities. For more information on our Accreditation Services, please see the IIQ pages on our website or contact Rob Kindness from our IIQ team on 0191 239 8083.
About The Safety Train
The Safety Train, http://www.thesafetytrain.co.uk/ operates an e-learning training portal aimed at covering all aspects of health & safety training. It offers a range of social care training, personal development training and office safety training covering: fire, first aid, food, general care and the various provisions of the mental capacity act. Single user prices begin at GBP20.
About Learning Light Ltd
Sheffield-based Learning Light is a centre of excellence in the use of e-learning and learning technologies in the workplace. Its knowledge base contains over 400 papers offering insights and advice on how to use e-learning & learning technologies.

Learning Light, which operates http://www.e-learningcentre.co.uk one of the leading resources on e-learning in the UK, works closely with the Universities of Leeds and Sheffield and has undertaken a Systematic Literature Review of the available papers on the effective use of e-learning in conjunction with the University of Sheffield.
Learning Light occupies a unique space in the e-learning and learning technology sector networking with:
• Suppliers of e-learning and learning technologies to support the growth of the sector
• Buyers seeking out learning technology solutions to improve the effectiveness of their business or organisation
• Leading organisations worldwide who provide it with market knowledge from around the globe
It:
• Provides unbiased and impartial advice to both suppliers and buyers
• Hosts events and workshops that provide the platforms to impart and gain knowledge by encouraging collaboration and sharing of best practice
• Acts as a conduit between suppliers and buyers to forge successful business partnerships
• Provides market intelligence and benchmarking information gained from its many contacts and networking partners
• Provides access to research materials from leading learning technology professionals

Further information from:

David Patterson/ Gill Broadhead, Learning Light, +44 (0)114 223 2442
Bob Little, Bob Little Press & PR, +44 (0)1727 860405

Bob Little Press & PR specialises in providing business-to-business public relations (PR) services. We are committed to:
• Providing a personal service to our clients, taking time to understand each client's specific business goals and strategy - while also bearing in mind that the most successful PR people don't try to solve their client's problems. They try to help editors solve their readers' problems.
• Ensuring that our clients' messages are presented in the most effective way through the most effective and cost efficient channels. You might say that 'we tell the truth as you would want it told'.
For more details, visit http://www.boblittlepr.com