Contribution of private trainers

What contribution can private educators make?

• Strengthen employability / mobility
  People must be able to quickly and purposefully retrain, upskill and thus become more mobile. Private trainers work demand-oriented with innovative learning methods that match the way adults want to learn (e-learning, mix of methods) at times they want (workplace, evening, weekends) and linked to their daily (work) practice.

• Effective training
  The dropout rate among young people in state-funded education is still too high, costing the state a lot of money. These young people often feel much more at home in the small-scale learning environment of private trainers. Structured and with matwork, they get their diploma. Private trainers are specialists in training appropriate to the situation. In many cases, this is on the job. In this way, employers gain little lost time and adults learn only what is necessary.

• Teaching basic skills / personal skills
  To participate in society and business, people need basic skills. Workers, both at the executive and managerial level often lack essential skills, such as collaboration skills, conversational skills and leadership skills. Private trainers specializing in personal skills provide that expertise. With their years of knowledge and experience combined with the use of new technologies, they are more than ever able to make a targeted contribution to the development of these personal skills.

• Teaching language skills
  The Netherlands is a trading nation. In order to participate in Dutch society and work, citizens must be sufficiently proficient in Dutch. Research by the European Commission from 2006 shows that more than one in ten companies has missed out on a contract due to a lack of knowledge of modern foreign languages. By investing in this, companies and employees can avoid missing out on contracts.

• Measuring and validating learning
  Learning, both in informal settings and in the workplace creates value. This must then be made demonstrable to the participant and to his employer. Has someone achieved the desired final level and what has the training investment brought to the organization? For employee mobility and especially for unemployed and those threatened with unemployment, it is important to demonstrate what they have learned through working. This makes them more confident. Good validation and measurement tools to demonstrate this are therefore important, for the employee but also to avoid unnecessary training costs for employers. Recent years have seen substantial investment in these measuring instruments: what someone has learned through work experience can always be mapped out. Transparency and reliability of the diploma/certificate are paramount. Whereas in regular education the standardization of exams and purchasing of exams is still in its infancy, private trainers in the financial and ICT sector, among others, already work with standardized exams or purchase exams from exam institutes. Language institutes have been working with the European learning framework CEF for 20 years.

NRTO. Learning pays off! Position Paper.