Executive Summary

The UK market for IT training was worth £772m in 2000 and is expected to grow to a value of £850m in 2001. The rate of growth in the market has slowed appreciably in the past 2 years, following years of very high rates of expansion in the mid-1990s. E-learning (or technology-based training) has grown in maturity and sophistication, and this area has recently seen more rapid increases in value than the instructor-led training (ILT) sector.

There are four reasons for the slowdown in the IT training market in 2000 and 2001: the end of demand for IT training related to the Year 2000 problem, the economic slowdown in the US (which is having a knock-on effect on the IT budgets of UK companies), the bursting of the `dotcom bubble' (which has reduced the number of Web-focused UK IT companies), and the relative paucity of new software launches in 2000 (which has reduced the demand for new software skills).

Set against these negative trends are trends that have helped to support the demand for IT training in recent years. The development of the Internet and intranets has led to greater demand for Web-related and e-commerce-related IT skills. In addition, IT has become strategically important for most businesses, and the employment of adequately trained IT staff is now central to business strategy. Moreover, the UK continues to face an IT skills shortage, which is producing a constant demand for newly trained and retrained IT staff.

The IT training market is undergoing a major change. The distinction between products/courses and value-added services is becoming blurred, as is the distinction between ILT and e-learning courses. Increasingly, clients want — and are being given — value-added services such as training consultancy and end-to-end training solutions as well as basic courses. Clients are also showing a growing demand for `blended' training programmes, which incorporate both ILT and e-learning elements. Meanwhile, the growth of e-commerce is resulting in the merging of IT with corporate strategy, leading to a demand for IT training that incorporates more general business skills. This is opening the general management training market to IT training vendors and the IT training market to general management training companies.

Key Note predicts that the demand for IT training services and courses will remain relatively strong over the next 5 years, as the number of IT staff in the UK continues to grow, and as the UK continues to face IT skill shortages. E-learning will be the main driver of growth, but the distinction between ILT and e-learning will continue to be eroded as virtual classrooms and blended learning increase in importance. As such, learning will become less structured, with staff using a range of training objects (from short instructions lasting a few seconds to full-scale courses) to gather the information they need. At the same time, training will become more mobile, with access via portable PCs and personal digital assistants (PDAs) of growing importance.

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