Engaging individuals with learning difficulties and disabilities in workplace learning

The aim of this guide is to highlight where and how providers can work to make their offer of workplace learning more inclusive for disabled employees. It is based on the good practice, insights and experiences of a numberof providers from across England who are working hard to deliver learning provision in an accessible and inclusive way, both inside the workplace and outside of it.

This guide aims to share these insights more widely in order to add value to the existing good practice that many providers already have underway around the Equality Duty and their own equality and diversity commitments.

This guide is for all providers who are interested in making their offer of workplace learning more inclusive for disabled employees. This includes providers such as further education colleges, private training providers,and providers in the voluntary sector.

Most of the good practice examples that we uncovered and have cited in this guide have been drawn from provision aimed at employees with low skill levels (qualifications below Level 2) that has been funded under European Social Fund (ESF) Priority 2 and Priority 5. However, much of thispractice cuts across levels of learning and is relevant to other levels of learning and types of provision.

This guide was produced by the Institute for Employment Studies (IES) and The National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE) on behalf of the Skills Funding Agency. The guide forms part of a wider research project, ‘Supporting learners with learning difficulties and disabilities to access European Social Fund Priority 2 provision’ and more details about that research are provided in the Annex to this guide.