SLN engaging with employers

8 Jun 2009

1 June saw the SLN's new employer engagement project, known as the Centre for Work and Learning, get underway. Viki Faulkner, the new SLN Director, and Peter Barron, the new SLN Deputy Director, have joined Adam Stewart, Network Manager, in the SLN's new premises at Exion House in Brighton.

Viki Faulkner, formerly of the Kent and Medway Lifelong Learning Network said: "I am delighted to be joining the SLN at this exciting time. The Centre for Work and Learning is a new project of the SLN which will concentrate on deepening employer engagement with higher education. Our partner institutions across Sussex will be working to provide accredited learning which will be flexible enough to suit the needs of employers and those in the workplace." 

This new work aims to blend partners’ skills and expertise to deliver:

• a breadth of engagement that ranges from local micro businesses across Sussex to larger employers operating in the south east and beyond
• a service that enables employers, employees, existing learners and brokers to access the full range of provision offered by the partners
• a service which will proactively target and specialise in particular sectors as well as offer a responsive generic curriculum to all employers
• an offer that will extend across the full range of the curriculum levels from entry to masters level and deliver in a flexible and innovative way
• offer employers the chance to directly participate in shaping, customising and supporting provision in return for a clear commitment to make a financial contribution that is commensurate with this level of ownership
• develop a new way of contracting with higher education providers that reflects this new relationship.