As Tim Whitaker of P&O Ferries transforms the development opportunities of the company’s staff with the help of City & Guilds qualifications, the City & Guilds Group is transforming the way it works with centres, learners and employers. As Lauren Capp of Colchester Institute takes her Professional Cookery Diploma and dreams of working in a London restaurant, we’re planning our future with a new Strategic Plan.

City & Guilds’ transformation has blended organisational efficiency and restructuring with an expanding range of qualifications and network of partners in order to offer a more innovative, diverse and flexible experience for our learners and centres.

We’ve made significant progress against a background of challenges and achieved our overall financial targets to maintain the fiscal health of the Group. This places us in a good position, but we will need to adapt to a changing environment whose latest developments range from Diplomas and the Qualifications and Credit Framework to the sort of evolution of further education that we have recently seen in Northern Ireland with the merging of 16 colleges into six new super colleges.

In our 2006-2011 Strategic Plan, we set out ambitious objectives. In the last 12 months we have taken the critical first steps in order to achieve these goals, building on our core values of innovation, engagement, excellence, integrity and fulfilment.