PRODUCTS & SERVICES
- Probe for Manufacturing
- Probe for Service
- Probe for Micro Business
- Probe for Agriculture
- Including Red Meat, Cereals and Dairy businesses
- Probe for Public and Not for Profit Services
- Including Healthcare and Learning Providers
- Probe for Sustainability
- Probe for Leadership and People Management
- From Benchmarking to Improvement
- Including Action Planning and the Tipping Point Workshop — developing change management capability
- Customisation of Best Practice Benchmarking tools and services
PROBE for Learning Providers
From 2001 onwards, the Learning and Skills Development Agency (and its predecessor, the UK's Further Education Development Agency) has used PROBE extensively for raising quality and achievement across a range of learning providers.
Managers and staff from a number of learning providers have contributed substantially to the development of PROBE for Learning Providers, adapting and enhancing versions of PROBE used in other sectors in order to optimise the tool's applicability and impact.
PROBE for Learning Providers has been used by close to 100 colleges of further education and work-based learning providers, as a means of benchmarking their performance and pinpointing opportunities to improve practices and processes that will drive performance gains. They have gained insights into best practices deployed elsewhere within their own sector, and thought laterally across sectoral boundaries to learn from achievements and approaches which have proved successful elsewhere.
PROBE has given the college a snapshot of how all our processes work. The senior management team has discussed its findings and has recognized its value in informing self-assessment and continuous improvement... In our view, colleges in the sector would benefit from using PROBE, particularly for self-assessment and continuous improvement.
Further Education College
2003
The sector has gained invaluable learning from the LSDA's deployment of PROBE Best Practice Benchmarking. A report on the findings from the first phase of the programme — "Learning Excellence" - is available to download. Key findings have included:
- identification of a pattern of relatively strong performance not necessarily underpinned by good practice — indicating outcomes achieved at a high cost in human and financial terms, leaving providers somewhat vulnerable and ill-prepared for further development or growth
- a need to strengthen the processes of continuous improvement and the management of change
For more information about PROBE for Learning Providers, and to find out how you can access this service, contact us.