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)
“To raise a son without learning is raising an ass; to raise a daughter without learning is raising a pig.”
—Chinese proverb.
“I have great faith in ‘ordinary parents.’ Who has a child’s welfare more at heart than his ordinary parent? It’s been my experience that when parents are given the skills to be more helpful, not only are they able to use these skills, but they infuse them with a warmth and a style that is uniquely their own.”
—Haim Ginott (20th century)
“On fields all drenched with blood he made his record in war, abstained from lawless violence when left on the plantation, and received his freedom in peace with moderation. But he holds in this Republic the position of an alien race among a people impatient of a rival. And in the eyes of some it seems that no valor redeems him, no social advancement nor individual development wipes off the ban which clings to him.”
—Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1825–1911)
“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)