The Learning and Skills Development Agency (LSDA) was a publicly funded body in the United Kingdom that supported further education in England. At the end of March 2006 its functions were divided into the Quality Improvement Agency (QIA) and the Learning and Skills Network (LSN) and its trading subsidiary, Inspire Learning, better known by its brand name the Centre for Excellence in Leadership was spun-out. Inspire Leadership and QIA were re-absorbed into the same corporate entity, the Learning and Skills Improvement Service on 1 October 2008.
Before November 2000 it was known as the Further Education Development Agency (FEDA). FEDA was established in 1995 to support the further education community in England, as a result of a merger between the Further Education Unit and the Staff College.
The role of the LSDA was to support post-16 education in England, Wales and Northern Ireland (but not in Scotland, where there is a different organisational framework for education).
In Wales the organisation was known as Dysg. It was absorbed into the Welsh Assembly Government. LSDA Northern Ireland continues as a subsidiary company of LSN.
Famous quotes containing the words learning and, learning, skills, development and/or agency:
“Even from their infancy we frame them to the sports of love: their instruction, behaviour, attire, grace, learning and all their words aimeth only at love, respects only affection. Their nurses and their keepers imprint no other thing in them.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“Some parents were awful back then and are awful still. The process of raising you didn’t turn them into grown-ups. Parents who were clearly imperfect can be helpful to you. As you were trying to grow up despite their fumbling efforts, you had to develop skills and tolerances other kids missed out on. Some of the strongest people I know grew up taking care of inept, invalid, or psychotic parents—but they know the parents weren’t normal, healthy, or whole.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“The young women, what can they not learn, what can they not achieve, with Columbia University annex thrown open to them? In this great outlook for women’s broader intellectual development I see the great sunburst of the future.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)
“It is possible that the telephone has been responsible for more business inefficiency than any other agency except laudanum.... In the old days when you wanted to get in touch with a man you wrote a note, sprinkled it with sand, and gave it to a man on horseback. It probably was delivered within half an hour, depending on how big a lunch the horse had had. But in these busy days of rush-rush-rush, it is sometimes a week before you can catch your man on the telephone.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)