Vocational education is education that prepares people for a skilled craft as an artisan, trade as a tradesperson, or work as a technician. Vocational education can also be seen as that type of education given to an individual to prepare that individual to be gainfully employed or self employed with requisite skill. Vocational education is known by a variety of names, depending on the country concerned, including career and technical education, or acronyms such as TVET and TAFE.
Apprenticeship is a system for training a new generation of practitioners of a trade or profession with on-the-job training and often some accompanying study. Apprenticeships can also enable practitioners to gain a license to practice in a regulated occupation. Most of their training is done while working for an employer who helps the apprentices learn their trade or profession, in exchange for their continued labor for an agreed period after they have achieved measurable competencies.
Education in England is overseen by the Department for Education. Local government authorities are responsible for implementing policy for public education and state-funded schools at a local level. State-funded schools may be selective grammar schools or non-selective comprehensive schools. All state schools are subject to assessment and inspection by the government department Ofsted. England also has private schools and home education; legally, parents may choose to educate their children by any suitable means.
The City and Guilds of London Institute is an educational organisation in the United Kingdom. Founded on 11 November 1878 by the City of London and 16 livery companies to develop a national system of technical education, the institute has been operating under royal charter, granted by Queen Victoria, since 1900. The Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, was appointed the first president of the institute.
Kaplan, Inc. is an international educational services company that provides educational and training services to colleges, universities, businesses and individuals around the world. Founded in 1938 by Stanley Kaplan, the company offers a variety of test preparation, certifications, and student support services. The company is headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Graham Holdings Company.
Pearson plc is a multinational corporation, headquartered in the UK, focused on educational publishing and services.
HCL Technologies Limited, doing business as HCLTech, is an Indian multinational information technology (IT) consulting company headquartered in Noida. Founded by Shiv Nadar, it was spun out in 1991 when HCL entered into the software services business. The company has offices in 60 countries and over 225,000 employees.
Kaplan Financial Ltd is a British company providing training in accountancy and financial services. It was founded in 1958. Kaplan Financial is part of Kaplan, Inc., a subsidiary of Graham Holdings Company. Kaplan Financial has more than 48,000 students a year, both in the UK and overseas. It offers courses in 28 training centres throughout the UK as well as home study and online learning.
Tyne Metropolitan College is a college of further education in North Tyneside, England.
Skills for Life is a national lifelong learning strategy in England for improving adult skills, designed to help learners develop their reading, writing, maths, technical, and digital skills. It provides universal free education and training; including courses in digital, numeracy and transferable skills; traineeships; apprenticeships; and vocational qualifications for all adults in further education colleges and beyond.
Learndirect Ltd, stylised as learndirect, is a British training provider founded in 2000, owned by the private equity firm Queens Park Equity. The company has a network of learning centres in England and Wales, and also runs some courses online.
The Malaysian Qualifications Framework or the MQF is a unified system of post secondary qualifications offered on a national basis in Malaysia. It is administered by the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA), a statutory body under the purview of the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE).
NIIT Limited (National Institute of Information Technology) is an Indian multinational skills and talent development corporation headquartered in Gurgaon, India. The company was set up in 1981 to help the nascent IT industry overcome its human resource challenges. NIIT offers training and development to individuals, enterprises and institutions.
Instructus Skills is both the standard setting organisation for business skills and the largest apprenticeship-issuing authority in the United Kingdom by number of certificates issued. Instructus Skills has one of the largest organisational footprints of any standards-setting body or Sector Skills Council representing approximately 11 million UK employees working in pan-sector occupations, and developed apprenticeship frameworks which were expected to be started by over 122,000 learners during 2010–11.
NCFE is an awarding organisation and registered educational charity providing qualifications in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. NCFE is regulated by Ofqual in England, and recognised by Qualifications Wales and the Council for the Curriculum, Examinations & Assessment in Northern Ireland.
Alternative pathways in education are alternative means of obtaining educational qualifications, other than the traditional means of gaining access to or completing the required study to obtain the educational qualifications.
Pluralsight, LLC is an American privately held online education company that offers a variety of video training courses for software developers, IT administrators, and creative professionals through its website. Founded in 2004 by Aaron Skonnard, Keith Brown, Fritz Onion, and Bill Williams, the company has its headquarters in Farmington, Utah. As of July 2018, it uses more than 1,400 subject-matter experts as authors, and offers more than 7,000 courses in its catalog. Since first moving its courses online in 2007, the company has expanded, developing a full enterprise platform, and adding skills assessment modules.
Global University Systems B.V. (GUS) is a for-profit private limited company registered in the Netherlands. As a corporate group, it owns and operates several private for-profit colleges and universities in the UK, Canada, Israel and Europe, as well as other brands and companies in the education sector, such as the e-learning provider InterActive. GUS was founded in its present form and name in 2013 by Aaron Etingen, who is chairman, CEO and majority stockholder.
A qualifications framework is a formalized structure in which learning level descriptors and qualifications are used in order to understand learning outcomes. This allows for the ability to develop, assess and improve quality education in a number of contexts. Qualifications frameworks are typically found at the national, regional, and international level.
