The Scottish Funding Council has allocated colleges £7 million - £2 million before April 2009 and £5 million after April to help businesses and individuals affected by redundancies through PACE. PACE, which was established in 2000, is a partnership initiative which helps organisations when redundancies are announced. For more information, see http://www.scotland.gov.uk/News/Releases/2009/01/26085625. Recently they were among a group of 30 people coming to terms with being made redundant when computer giant Dell began laying off staff at its Glasgow office. Now, 16 of these jobless technicians begin the first step on the road back to work when they enrol on a computing course approved by CISCO at Central College Glasgow.

In January, the Scottish Funding Council allocated £7 million to colleges to help businesses and individuals hit by the recession to re-skill through the Partnership Action for Continuing Employment (PACE) - and the course beginning today at Central is among the first in the country to take on learners using PACE funds.

''This is part of the pledge Central College Glasgow made earlier this year to be at the heart of plans to help upskill the workforce of Glasgow to prepare people to move back into employment as soon as possible,'' said Roy Gardner, Head of Marketing Events and Business Development at Central College.

''We have always worked closely with industry to come up with innovative programmes to meet their needs and this is an important step for Central College as we provide people with the skills they need so that they are ready to start working again when the economy improves.''

The trainees will study for 2.5 days per week for 15 weeks to attain their CISCO Certified Network Associate qualification. The course has been structured so that if any of the learners leave to take up a job before they complete the programme, they can finish it at night school. The course runs for less than 16 hours per week, so that the learners' benefits are not affected.

Central College is planning to roll-out a series of further courses funded by PACE for the newly-unemployed in areas such as computing, paralegal studies, procurement and line management.

Mr Gardner added: ''We understand that some businesses will be making redundancies as they streamline their workforce in these difficult times, but we want them to inform those about to lose their jobs that there are PACE-funded schemes such as the ones at Central College that can help them out.''

Ends

For further information, contact

Roy Gardner

Head of Marketing and Business Development

roy.gardner@central-glasgow.ac.uk

0141 271 2107