BestStart for Further Education College

 

Akonia BestStart

BestStartTM - the business and soft skills development programme for FE Students

 

  • Attract more students to your college with improved employment placement results.
  • Gain further recognition from employers for producing work-ready college graduates.
  • Increase your college’s ranking with improved Learner Destination and Progression ILR data.

 

WHY?

More so now than ever before it is essential to teach employability skills that improve your students’ prospects of gaining meaningful employment.

Teaching highly-regarded NVQ, foundation and graduate degrees is not enough to ensure the success of your college.  With the pressure to enter employment or progress to Higher Education, students are more demanding than ever.

 

With exceedingly high expectations of what your college can deliver for them, it has never been more important than now to provide your students with their best possible prospects of obtaining job offers and meaningful employment to embark upon their chosen career path.

 

Too many students feel it is their primary responsibility to acquire employability skills with only a minority of students agreeing that their college should take prime responsibility. 

 

Likewise many employers expect colleges to do more to teach practical employability skills.

 

What a wonderful opportunity this opens up for your college.

 

 

HOW?

We pride ourselves on helping your students to learn employability (business and soft skills) in a stimulating environment that aids retention of knowledge and quickly enables them to become competent and confident at applying these skills.

 

Our trainers are very experienced business people cum trainers.  This means that each can bring an average of some 25 years business experience into the classroom, and provide a wealth of anecdotal material from their business careers with which to illuminate the topics being taught and the issues your students may have with them.

 

Every trainer has recruited and/or managed first-time employees, and really understands the challenges these employees face when entering the world of work.

 

Our BestStartTM training programme and content is designed with your students in mind.  They learn in the classroom as well as online.  They are engaged with social media.  They expect the content to be tailored to their personal requirements and relevant to their level of experience.
 

Our 1 year modularised instructor-led classroom-based programme is flexible in its design so it can fit in comfortably with your existing curriculum and extra-curricular activities. We make it easy for you by taking care of what they need to learn, and we’ll help you integrate it into your existing timetable.  You’ll be able to track your student’s performance and progress, and utilise this insight for improving your existing courses with more employment-related content.

 

 

WHAT

Research shows that the most important employability (business and soft) skills that Employers are looking for in your graduating students are:-
 

  • Business & Customer Awareness
  • Self-Management
  • Communications & Literacy
  • Problem Solving
  • Teamworking
  • Positive attitude to work
  • Application of Numeracy & IT skills

 

We’ve designed our BestStartTM training programme specifically for the needs of Further Education College students.  As they progress through their NVQ, foundation and graduate degrees, our training programme build and develop their business knowledge and soft skills in a stimulating, thought-provoking, pro-active environment that aids retention of knowledge and quickly enables them to become competent and confident at applying these skills.