Essex gets funding first

Essex Police College (EPC) has scored a national first in attracting additional
government funding to its inhouse student officer training programme.

The college linked up with Harlow College to obtain more than £127,000 for the 30-week Initial Police Learning Development Programme (IPLDP) from the Learning and Skills Council (LSC), which is responsible for funding and planning education and training for over-16s in England.

After months of negotiation, head of learning and development Pankajni Trivedi persuaded the LSC that EPC was being disadvantaged by not being eligible for funding and so the partnership with Harlow College was born.

Now, under a pilot scheme, EPC will ultimately receive the extra funds for the 92 student officers who started the IPLDP between March and July this year.

A condition of the scheme means that EPC must pay Harlow College around £64,000 - in return, its student officers will receive a basic skills identification and tutoring service, helping
those with dyslexia, for example.

EPC will also receive help with prioritising additional teacher training for its own trainers. Miss Trivedi said, "I am delighted that Essex Police College has been at the forefront of attracting additional government funding to help us to train the police officers of the future. The pilot project has benefited those student officers who were eligible by giving them access to specialised teaching, if they were found to require it, and this can only help them in their chosen career.

Under the old LSC funding rules, EPC was excluded because many trainees already had post-GCSE qualifications but Miss Trivedi successfully argued that all new police recruits have to take the IPLDP in order to become officers, regardless of previous qualifications. In April 2006, all forces were required to bring their student officer training programmes 'inhouse' - Essex Police has set up its curriculum to achieve NVQ Level 3 / 4 in policing. After a 20-week class-based programme, including law and policing theory, recruits spend ten weeks undergoing 'on the job' training in divisional professional development units (PDUs).

After passing out, they then continue working towards their NVQ, which is usually achieved within a year of joining Essex Police.