The Essential Skills Professional Development and Resource Centre was established in 2003 with the aim of increasing the ability of organisations in Coventry and Warwickshire to deliver the Skills for Life agenda more effectively. The Centre was officially launched on Monday 2nd June 2003 by Ivan Lewis MP, then the Minister for Young People and Adult Skills.   

We began as part of a Learning and Skills Council initiative to develop six professional development centres across the West Midlands. The aim of these centres was to support practitioners, managers, employers and organisations, to implement and build on their capacity to deliver high quality literacy, language and numeracy provision for adults. As such, we have worked with a range of organisations, including colleges, adult and community education, the voluntary and charitable sector, prisons and probation services, Job Centre Plus, libraries and others.

For the last six years we have been involved in a range of professional development programmes, educational projects and teacher training initiatives, as well as building up a physical resource centre where practitioners can browse and borrow teaching and support materials.

In June 2007 we became part of the Centre for Lifelong Learning at the University of Warwick, renamed as the Essential Skills Resource Centre. Although we still offer core services to practitioners in Coventry and Warwickshire, we now work with a wider range of organisations across the West Midlands and beyond.

For more specific information about what we can offer, click here.

The resource centre

The IT suite