A Mansfield business is celebrating its 15th anniversary by using its expertise and range of edtech solutions to support learners and apprentices during the coronavirus crisis.

Since 2005, Skills Forward has been pioneering new ways of working for the education and skills sector, enabling digital delivery of skills assessments for colleges, training providers and organisations.

The business is now supporting education providers in the short-term with its elearning solutions.

With face-to-face delivery difficult to impossible in the present climate, many training providers are worried about their funding and the future of their apprenticeship programmes and apprentices.

Skills Forward, which operates as part of the not-for-profit NCFE Group, has been supporting its customers to stay online and on track by scaling up their elearning activities with apprentices able to continue their training remotely.

“We have always aimed to respond to the needs of the sector and stay ahead of the curve, diversifying our offer wherever necessary as part of our commitment to promote and advance learning,” said Dan Howard, managing director at Skills Forward.

“We are all collectively facing the new challenge of coronavirus, and now is the time to pull together and support each other as a sector and ensure the futures of the learners, who will be impacted.

“Where we can use our expertise as an eLearning provider to help learners stay on track and providers to stay afloat, we’re more than happy to do so.”

Launched in 2005 as For Skills, the company has grown and now employs more than 30 people at its offices in Mansfield and Houghton-le-Spring, near Sunderland.

Its customer base spans FE colleges, private training providers and some of the UK’s biggest employers, including British Airways, Tesco and the Royal Navy, in the last year alone.