Events Index

Capita Further and Higher Education Conference Review - 30th April -1st May 2008


FHE National Conference 2008

With the general proliferation of conferences these days some are more important than others. This was an important conference.
We were fortunate to have Roger Dawe, senior advisor to KPMG’s Education Team, as our first keynote speaker. When a speaker has a CV that includes private secretary to Prime Minister Harold Wilson, director of the Manpower Services Commission and director of Further and Higher Education at the Department for Education, he clearly speaks with authority. So when Roger declared that the sector was facing a period of considerable and extensive change, it had a real impact.

Many of the other speakers echoed this view with Vici Cadwallader-Webb, associate director at Tenon, emphasising that the next 12 months would see changes as large as any since incorporation.

The names of organisations participating at the event reflected the changes. New bodies such as Ofqual (Isabel Nisbet, acting chief executive), the Information Authority (Una Bennett, Head of the IA, and Peter Ashton, Standards and Quality Manager) and LLUK (Angela Young, FE sector manager) were among those taking part.

There was, of course, input from longer established organisations including the LSC and UCAS.

The event, which had an attendance of 190, was held for the first time at the Hinckley Island Hotel and the emphasis this year was more on issues specific to MIS personnel. There were well received sessions from key organisation in the sector including Microsoft and Texuna Technologies as well as educational institutions - TVU, Xaverian College, Telford College, Edinburgh and City College, Birmingham.
The exhibition accompanying the event was well supported with representation from Abattia, AFD,  B-Plan, DRS, MIAP, The LSC, OCR, Edexcel, and the information authority.

FHE National Conference Awarding Bilborough College with Site of Excellance Award

Chris Cooper, director of Capita FHE also made the award of Capita Site of Excellence to Steve Worthington, vice principal of Bilborough College. As recorded elsewhere in this news letter this now brings the number of colleges qualifying as Sites of Excellence to eight.

If you missed the Conference we have recorded short post presentation interviews with all the key participants and these can be viewed at www.capitafhe.co.uk This will give you a short synopsis of the key points covered in around 30 minutes.

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