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, skills, development and/or agency:
“To begin with the wine jar in learning the potter’s art.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)
“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)
“This was the Eastham famous of late years for its camp- meetings, held in a grove near by, to which thousands flock from all parts of the Bay. We conjectured that the reason for the perhaps unusual, if not unhealthful development of the religious sentiment here, was the fact that a large portion of the population are women whose husbands and sons are either abroad on the sea, or else drowned, and there is nobody but they and the ministers left behind.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“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)