ECDL Celebrates Five Years of Success

The European Computer Driving Licence has nearly a million UK trainees after five years.

Nearly one million British workers, both young and old, are on course to become computer literate thanks to the Swindon-based British Computer Society (BCS), whose European Computer Driving Licence is celebrating five years of success this month.

A giant computer shaped cake was created to mark the event and was enjoyed by the BCS's 200 employees in Swindon as part of the recognition of their continued commitment and hard work to make the qualification such a national and worldwide success.

ECDL is an internationally recognised qualification that enables people to demonstrate their competence in computer skills. Designed to help people both at work and at home, ECDL confirms to employers that individuals have a recognised, relevant and up-to-date qualification.

ECDL was launched by the BCS in 1998 to address the divide between the arrival of new technology and people's ability to use it effectively. Following acceptance by a large number of European Computer Societies it has now became established as an international benchmark of IT user skills in over 125 countries with over 2.5 million candidates registered. In the UK its success is managed by the British Computer Society (BCS), the leading professional institute for IT professionals.

ECDL was introduced to the UK by a small dedicated team led by Pete Bayley, currently director of the ECDL programme within the UK, he explains: "Since establishing ECDL in the UK in 1998, the qualification's success has been phenomenal and has far exceeded our expectations. In 1998 we had just 150 test centres with 1200 candidates registered and now we're on target to reach 1,000,000 registrations by the end of the year!"

ECDL is available throughout the country in over 2,600 test centres with seven modules within the syllabus designed to cover the key concepts of computing, its practical applications and their use in the workplace and society in general. ECDL provides a solid foundation of computer skills helping people to competently and confidently use computers. The NHS, Ministry of Defence, Cabinet Office, HSBC, Sainsbury's and Cadbury's have all incorporated ECDL into their IT training, highlighting the fact that the qualification really is the recognised benchmark for IT competency in the UK.