UK Top 50 IT Training Providers, 2003

Pardo Fox has published the IT Skills Research fifth annual table of the UK top 50 IT training providers.

Top place goes to Learning Tree International, closely followed by Parity Training and the innovative QA, which offers a blended learning approach. One new entrant features in the top ten, Azlan, reporting a 5% revenue increase this year. You can see the top ten IT training providers of 2003 below.

The most striking aspect of this year's survey is the number of companies whose revenues were lower than in 2001, and for many of the larger companies the fall was significant. Learning Tree International retained its number 1 spot despite recording a drop of 24%, but QA slipped another place with a 31% decrease in sales. Bucking the trend was Parity Training who, with a series of contract wins and an acquisition or two, jumped 5 places to number 2. Another big faller was KnowledgePool which lost 37% of its revenue - and that was before it sold off Beaumont and withdrew from the direct provision of classroom training.

Lower down the table, it is pleasing to note that a fair number of companies managed to increase their revenues - Xpertise (after a number of acquisitions), John Matchett and Electric Paper saw the biggest rises - but these are in the minority.

The total revenues of all the 2003 Top 50 companies is 14% lower than last year's Top 50 companies' revenues, but this year there were far more alliances (one company offering another's courses) that the double counting of training revenues has probable crept up to around 13% of the total. Adjusting for that, it could be argued that the market probably fell by about 16% in 2002.

Pardo Fox's quarterly market monitor survey indicates that the rate of decline has fallen, but it looks probable that the total market size will again shrink in 2003. They also anticipate some changes in the Top 50 next year with further consolidation in some corners.

To compile the table, Pardo Fox gathered the revenues of companies with IT training businesses and excluded sales of training delivered outside the UK and non-IT related business from those companies that offer both types. They exclude organisations whose revenue is derived principally from publicly funded training or from military/defence-specific IT training, training franchises whose revenues consist only of royalties and training brokers/portals.

Figures are UK revenues only, are rounded to the nearest £100,000 and relate to fiscal years ending in 2002 (i.e. accounts for the year ending sometime between 1 January 2002 and 31 December 2002).

For the complete listing and further information, please visit Pardo Fox's IT Skills Research Web site. A summary of the complete report showing the 'top ten' is provided below.

The top ten IT training providers

Rank 2003	Rank 2002	Company	Revenue 2002, £m	Change in Revenue
1	1	Learning Tree International	29.3	- 24%
2	7	Parity Training	27.1	+ 2%
3	2	QA	26.6	- 31%
4	6	Thomson NETg	22.4	- 5%
5	5	IBM Education Services	22.0	- 18%
6	3	KnowledgePool	21.6	- 37%
7	11	Azlan	20.0	+ 5%
8	4	SAP	19.7	- 10%
9	8	Oracle University	17.9	- 23%
10	9	Spring IT Training	16.5	- 5%