Established in 1998, the RACPD is a thriving and successful provider of apprenticeships and nationally recognised qualifications to all serving personnel including veterans. We aim to deliver high quality, relevant training and education to meet the needs of individuals and organisations, and to support successful recruitment, retention, resettlement and operational effectiveness in the Royal Artillery, the Army and the wider Defence community.
We offer over 40 civilian qualifications to help improve an individual’s skills and knowledge in-career and for their next career. We cover a wide range of subjects: from logistics to telecommunications; teacher education; maths and English; ICT; Leadership & Management; IOSH; First Aid at Work; FLT; Driver CPC; and the Compliance Training Instructor package. Other courses and bundles are listed on the ELCAS website under provider No 1620.
Serving military personnel and veterans can access their learning credits, either Standard Learning Credits (SLC) or Enhanced Learning Credits (ELC), to offset the cost of their courses. Because we are a charity we provide some courses for free and some at subsidised rates.
Learners can do their learning online, in the work place and even in one of our Learning Centres which are in RA regiments across England and in Germany. Many of our staff are ex-military and that helps them to understand the learning environment and the unique issues that military personnel are facing.
RACPD is unusual in the world of Army apprenticeships. We are one of the only providers using soldiers as assessors on the apprenticeship programme. We ask for volunteers, we make sure they are occupationally competent, we give them training and then we mentor and support them with their first few learners – and then we let them get on with it! We also register every assessor with a national awarding organisation so that they are properly and fully qualified. Once they leave the Army they will have a recognised qualification and the experience to go with it; they will then be highly employable as an assessor in a civilian company.