EMPLOYER ENGAGEMENT MANUAL PRESENTED IN YEREVAN

/PanARMENIAN.Net/
17.02.2010 15:32 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The Employer Engagement Manual was presented in
Yerevan in the frame of the "Skills@Work" project of the British
Council in Armenia. The manual has been designed for VET college
principals and is supposed to support and guide them in establishing
cooperation with employers.

The "Skills@Work" is intended to develop vocational education in
Armenia and 19 countries in South-Eastern Europe and is supported by
the local education ministry.

According to Vahagn Hovhannisyan, head of business projects department
at RA Chamber of Commerce, cooperation between business and education
will play an important role in the country’s development.

The British Council is a quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation
based in the United Kingdom which specialises in international
educational and cultural opportunities. It is a non-departmental
public body, a public corporation incorporated by royal charter,
and is registered as a charity in England.

Founded in 1934, it was granted a royal charter by King George VI in
1940. Its ‘sponsoring department’ within the United Kingdom Government
is the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, although it has day-to-day
operational independence. Martin Davidson is its chief executive,
appointed in April 2007.

Its most recent Chair was Lord Kinnock, the former leader of the UK
Labour Party and a former European Commissioner. Kinnock stepped down
after a meeting of the Board of Trustees on 7 July 2009 following the
appointment of his wife to the House of Lords and as a Minister in the
Foreign and Commonwealth Office which is the sponsoring department
of British Council. Their son Stephen Kinnock – who was previously
British Council’s main lobbyist in Brussels and St Petersburg – left
in January 2009 to take up a job with The World Economic Forum after
he was expelled from Russia.

The Deputy Chair of British Council – Labour housing activist Gerard
Lemos who is also a director of British Council’s "off record" company
British Council International Trading Limited – has taken over as
Acting Chairperson until a successor to Lord Kinnock is recruited.