With China relaxing its one child policy, the Early Years education market there is flourishing. Both Chinese and international providers are rushing to set up early years care settings.
Early Years expert Jill Johnson has been working as a consultant in China, helping businesses set up child care settings. It soon became apparent, through her quality inspection work, that local staff being recruited did not have the basic level of knowledge she deemed necessary. So, the challenge became how could she train thousands of Chinese nursery workers to British standards, easily and cost-effectively?
The obvious answer was to create quality online training courses, in both English and Chinese, to train workers in the basic skills they needed. Jill turned to EdTech entrepreneur Kirsty Collinson, who is one of the directors behind TrainingToolz, a technology platform that had been developed to create, deliver and track online training. The technology had been initially developed for one of Kirsty’s own online publishing businesses, and now was being made available to other organisations allowing them to expand their offerings.
AllStars Training, a platform where international nursery groups can train their staff to British standards has now been born. The platform will officially be launched at Bett in 2019 with courses in both English and Chinese.
Jill commented “I am very excited to launch this new online early years training product which delivers bespoke, bite-sized courses to the early years workforce around the world. Throughout the last 19 years, working within the childcare sector in the UK has highlighted the importance of understanding child development and that’s where our courses begin. The British education system is valued by many other countries and our training allows practitioners and educational establishments to access training with ease”.
The Product
The AllStars product provides CPD Accredited online training courses for Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) staff.
The Platform
The AllStars product runs on the TrainingToolz.com platform. TrainingToolz partners education, business and charity organisations so they can create, distribute and manage their own online training.
The Senior Team
Jill Johnson, Early Years Expert
Jill is the Founder and Managing Director of Twinkles Nursery Group in Yorkshire, England. Jill and Twinkles have won numerous awards including NMT top 5 business index award 2017, NMT power 20 2015 and Yorkshire women of enterprise awards for business 2013 and 2014.
Jill has worked as an early years consultant for many companies in the UK and overseas in China, Dubai and South Africa, carrying out projects ranging from designing suitable buildings, to delivering training and carrying out quality inspections.
Jill has devised the training programme for All Stars UK to enable British early years online training to be carried out around the world with ease. The British system overseas is becoming a rapidly growing business particularly in China, the Middle East, India, Sri Lanka and South Africa.
Jill’s two children have always been and remain her inspiration.
Kirsty Collinson, EdTech and Publishing
Kirsty began her career as a serial entrepreneur as a Shell LiveWire finalist in the 1990s. Since then she has been behind a series of award-winning and highly successful website launches including www.gapwork.com and www.E-safetysupport.com. After receiving business angel funding for gapwork.com, Kirsty went on to buy out the investors three years later, and create an online publishing business that included a portfolio of advertising and subscription-driven websites in the travel and education sectors. Kirsty now specialised in EdTech startups such as TrainingToolz.com.
Her media profile includes work as a business columnist for the Sunday Express and the Yorkshire Post. She has won the Sunday Express Young Entrepreneur of the Year award, been Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the year finalist, and her portfolio of websites has resulted in awards including BETT finalist, best start-up business and best B2C website from Digital Yorkshire.
Further Information:
Jill Johnson is available for press comments and speaking events. Please contact her at Jill@AllStarsUK.com
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