News

28 June 2007 - Praise for MyKnowledgeMap's online portal for the National Skills Academy for Food & Drink Manufacturing

MyKnowledgeMap’s online portal for the National Skills Academy for Food & Drink Manufacturing received an excellent response from attendees at the official launch of the National Skills Academy for Food & Drink Manufacturing (NSA) last week.

Chief executive of Improve Jack Matthews, chairman of the government’s Learning and Skills Council Chris Banks and two students from Young’s Seafood The launch, held at Young’s Seafood in Grimsby—one of the UK’s biggest employers in the food & drink manufacturing sector—was a great success. Chris Banks, chairman of the government’s Learning and Skills Council officially launched the online portal during the high profile event attended by senior staff from several food and drink manufacturers, the Learning and Skills Council, training providers, trade associations, DfES (the government’s Department for Education and Skills) and Defra (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs).

The online portal we have created for the academy will enable the National Skills Academy’s network of specialist training providers to advertise their services and help both employers and individuals within the sector to locate relevant, local training to support their business or personal development.

Young’s employees Chris Howden and Tina Birks Users can access a wealth of free tools and resources as well as industry-specific e-learning courses and general business information. As part of the development we have also produced an e-learning course in Production Management for the portal, authored by Grimsby Institute specifically for the skills academy.

MyKnowledgeMap’s Systems Development Director Becky Calder was delighted with the response the online portal received from attendees at the launch, “We had some great feedback about the way the system looked and worked as well as the quality of the content. Several attendees said they were amazed at the high quality of free access material available through the online portal which includes Bloomsbury’s Good Small Business Guide, Food Safety Assessments, Downloadable Documents, Bottlenecks and Cause & Effect Toolkits, Information Packs and a Discussion Forum.”

Technician Chris Howden and shift manager Tina Birks from Youngs will be the first two students to log onto the skills academy which is set to provide education and training for at least 28,000 learners during its first four years.