Do you have too many eggs in the one basket?
During the past two months, there has been a significant increase in new providers, with
44 new training providers, increasing the number of players on the pitch and spreading
recruitment more thinly. Almost all of these are Independent Learning providers, and nearly
all offer boot camps. It’s worth considering whether this increases or decreases your market
share. It appears many are new boot camps providing ICT. Almost all new providers achieve
reasonable progress, with just a few showing insufficient progress.
Ofsted does not comment on the number of providers offering a particular curriculum;
they inspect what the Df E presents, even though many of these new providers have small
learner numbers. Large ILPs are unlikely to notice a significant difference; however, smaller
providers and colleges could see a drop in recruitment and threaten programme survival.
How does one survive in an overgrown market? Diversification has got to be a consideration.
History tells us government schemes are often short-lived, which could be the case for boot
camps. There is no indication they are going anywhere soon, but that day may come. Do you
have a diversification strategy to protect the business if it does?
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