Member Article

New chairman for One Awards

David Hall has been appointed as the new Chair of the Board of Trustees for Co Durham based One Awards and takes up his post this month from outgoing Chair, Ray Snowdon who has been a Trustee since 2006 and led the board from 2011.

One Awards – (formerly known as OCNNER - the Open College Network North East Region) offers bespoke educational course accreditation services, NOCN qualifications, Access to Higher Education Diplomas and training to learning providers throughout the UK.

One Awards supervises hundreds courses running throughout the country, from highly sought after award-winning Heritage Construction Apprenticeships to Beer Brewing and the only national qualifications for Funeral Celebrants. The organisation has recently accredited a series of five nationwide Emergency Training courses for Cleveland Police and an interactive Healthy Eating for Older People course accredited by One Awards has just won Heritage Lottery Funding for Age UK County Durham.

David Hall, Head of Leisure, Strategy and Transformation at the Northumbrian Water Group, holds an Honours Degree in Civil Engineering and a Master’s Degree in Leadership & Management. He is particularly interested in education and has held a number of governance roles, as a leader for schools in Ofsted categories and special measures, having been appointed to lead the first Interim Executive Board in Northumberland. His leadership was highlighted by Ofsted in 2012 in a best practice report: “Governance - Learning from the best”.

He is deeply passionate about the impact that improving education has in changing the economic and social prospects of communities, families and individuals.

David Hall says: “I am delighted to be appointed as Chairman of One Awards - a fantastic organisation that guides and accredits hundreds of vocational courses in a huge variety of subjects every year and offers people practical and useful qualifications that set them on the road to learning, in many cases leading to a new found confidence, great new skills and a worthwhile job.

“We are all born with a variety of talents and everyone has different educational needs. We need more good vocational teaching, along with excellent, respected qualifications that take into account everyone’s individual strengths in order to achieve balanced communities.

“One Awards do a great job of helping people of all ages and stages in their lives to achieve good training and qualifications that are important to the economy, to the workplace and to the local community. It’s an excellent organisation with a team who are totally committed to ensuring everyone achieves their true potential. I’m very proud to be involved with them.”

Louise Merritt, Chief Executive of One Awards comments: “David Hall is a very inspiring leader with passionate ideals and beliefs in education that closely match our own, along with a wonderful, can-do attitude. We are immensely pleased to have him as our new Chair.”

To find out more about the work of One Awards, please visit One Awards

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Kate Slater .