"Up-skilling" is a word which has been coined in the modern business world to refer to the way in which employees' skills and knowledge can be improved to the benefit of an employer. ALPN is able to help you with some of the most basic aspects of such an improvement programme - employee literacy, employee numeracy and common aspects of the use of modern computer work-stations.

How Does it Work?

As you may have seen from some of the other documents on this web site, our objective in life as a community-based charitable society is to help those adults in our community who need such help to the best of our ability at no cost to the individual.

If you consider there is a need to improve the literacy and numeracy skills of your employees or clients then there are two basic options -

• Send your staff along to us and we will offer our normal individual or group tuition which is not aimed at any particular external business or organisational target - in the students' own time and at no cost to them. You have no control over the length of time or outcome of any tuition given.
• Think about the particular kinds of literacy and numeracy skills which you would like your staff or clients to have and then contact us to arrange a tailor-made course of direct benefit to you - for which we will arrange a contract at very reasonable rates. The charges we make for such a tailor-made plan provide you with an opportunity to help the community by getting a direct benefit for your business; at the same time you will be supporting our work with other individual adults whom we do not charge.

What?

Before you contact us, however, you should have some idea of the kinds of additional or improved skills which you would find it beneficial for your staff to be able to exercise. While we would be delighted to offer general reading or writing courses - at time and place to be arranged - we can also tailor a general course to using the vocabulary and kinds of written document which you consider they need.

The same need to consider the nature of numeracy skills desired must also be thought about. There are so many different aspects of 'numbers' in industry and business which we could make use of when tailoring to a particular industry - weights and measures, common statistics, financial arithmetic; all these and more are possibilities you might like to think about.

We can also provide tuition towards some national or industry recognised qualification which could be of longer term benefit to you.

When?

Most of our courses are taught during the day, although we do some work during the evening. If you are looking to improve your staff or clients general communication skills then this may not fit into the normal working day. Ask yourself when tuition would be most convenient for both those undergoing tuition and for your own business.

If your need is for general skill enhancement, then we can take individual members of staff at any time - under your contract sponsorship.

We prefer for our tutors not to work over the week-end. They are all volunteers, many retired after years of teaching or lecturing, who like to think of themselves as free agents as far as possible.

Where?

Our premises are more suitable to individual and small group tuition - up to six or, possibly, eight students at a time. This size of group has been found optimal for the kind of individual attention which nearly all our students need.

It is perfectly possible for our tutors to come to your premises and provide the tuition needed - subject to the satisfactory nature of the room available and normal Occupational Safety and Health regulations for teaching facilities.

Next Step

Now you have had an opportunity to think about things, the next step is to contact us and arrange an informal meeting to our mutual convenience!

We aim to be flexible in negotiating contracts, depending on your needs. We have, however, found that the following kinds of contract work well from our point of view, from the students' points of view and from your point of view too!

• A time-based contract on which, over some period of time (generally a year or two) we agree to accept suitable students on an "as required" basis - payment on a per-student basis.
• A one-off contract for a specific purpose. This could include organising a small-group "class" at a work-place - or here at ALPN.
• An individual contract for a specific student with learning problems; occasionally this has been applied for a small group of two or three where the problems thay have are similar.