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"Students come to us to take the ICB course to improve their employability. We have been delivering ICB qualifications as an evening class since 1999 and we find that they are popular mostly with mature students. The class of students can be a mix of complete beginners and some with existing experience.
"Some students are already employed in a bookkeeping capacity and are looking to obtain a formal qualification to convince themselves, and possibly their employers, of their worth. Occasionally there have been complete beginners who need to learn bookkeeping to help out with a new family business or voluntary organisation. This year we even had a Polish lady with a very respectable qualification in accountancy from her own country who was looking for a qualification in Britain.
"The students all seem really committed to the qualification and work very hard even though they are studying in the evening and this has meant our results have been very good.
"The students are self funding although we know that many use their ILA (Individual Learning Account).
"We chose to run an ICB course back in 1999 because the syllabus seemed different to other similar courses; it is more practical. The reason we have continued to provide the course for more than ten years now is not just because the students enjoy it, but also because the ICB is a terrific organisation to work with. There are plenty of other courses we have ceased to provide in that time because the qualifying bodies were just not as good to work with as the ICB.
"I hope we will be able to expand our provision next year to take on more students, especially now ICB has done so much to offer accessible learning and assessments-on-demand. Interest in ICB courses is the strongest I've known it all these years." |