West Midlands Success Stories

Franchise Learner of the Year

Every year City College Birmingham have a major awards ceremony for the college and ask for nominations from Franchise partners of learners who they feel have shown determination and dedication to learning and have achieved a high standard of success.

This year our nominee Jim Darby won an award and had this to say: "Being nominated for this award was a big lift for me and made me aware of how far my colleagues and I had come, from when we first joined TBG over 3 years ago. The evening at Villa Park was a little unnerving, especially when asked to go up on stage to collect the award in front of so many people 300 - 400 approx. together with a large screen video as a backdrop and with many of the recipients wearing mortarboards and gowns. I would like to thank my tutors Alan Watton and Donna Ferryman who have been instrumental in helping me gain this award and who make my Saturday Morning classes so enjoyable, so much so that coming to TBG is now a way of life.

The help and guidance I have received from TBG has enabled me to develop a great deal at work, especially working with spreadsheets. I have secured 2 contracts for the business by holding the clients stock and emailing spreadsheet stock analysis to them on a weekly basis. Through the wealth of information and guidance I have received, I have successfully designed and published a web site for my business, which receives enquiries from as far away as China, Russia, Italy, Australia and Europe. I would recommend TBG to anyone who is interested in making that next step to learning more about the computer".

Lola Ann-Scotton & Sheila Howell are two Young @ Heart learners who have studied at TBG for a number of years and have been successful at gaining a wide range of IT applications at Level 1 & 2.

Every year City College have a major awards ceremony for the college and ask for nominations from Franchise partners of learners who they feel have shown determination & dedication to learning and have achieved a high standard of success. They were two of twelve nominated for this award from across other City College franchises so we are very proud that they were successful in gaining this award. Lola & Sheila are still very keen to continue learning and increase their knowledge into 2005. Sheila aged 75 is now also working part time for a solicitor putting her IT skills into practice.

Nuria Merenciano arrived in England in July 2003 from Spain. Although educated in Spain, Nuria needed to improve her spoken and written English to gain employment. She enrolled on both ELLIS Intro and Middle Mastery language courses and also studied a range of word and number programmes (5 in all) to improve her understanding. This has culminated in Nuria achieving her National Certificate at Level 2 in both Literacy and Numeracy. Nuria then decided to become IT literate and studied 5 IT courses at Level 1 and Level 2 and has just gained employment at a Language School in Birmingham.

TBG Learning West Midlands has enrolled its 1,000 th learner onto an English language course. He is 22 year-old Marcin Hubert Stasiak from Poland who is working locally in Birmingham for an Italian restaurant. “We have increased our capacity to deliver the Learndirect ELLIS course by introducing laptop learning in the community, which has been a major success”, said Adrian Downing, Regional Manager, TBG Learning West Midlands.