World's Leading IT companies establish an Academy structure
Since the establishment of the original Academy Programme by Cisco Systems in 1997 virtually all of the leading companies have strived to emulate the success achieved by Cisco. These include Apple, CompTIA, Microsoft, Oracle, Redhat, Sun (prior to becoming part of Oracle) and VMware. The aim being to establish "industry standard" certifications into the educational framework. Therefore enabling students from the age of 14+ to gain these much coveted certifications, gain practical skills and experience within their institution well beyond that normally acheived by students leaving fulltime education. This strengthened the skill base of the incoming workforce and also broadedned the demand for the hardware and software alike involved in the training.
Despite recent downturns in the world's economy there still exists major skills shortages within the UK, Europe and other parts of the world. This is a strategy to help reduce the world skills shortage as these programmes are now available on all continents, simply if the UK does not address this in education we will be left behind! Wolf calls for more stringent and arduous which can be met by the demands of these Academy programmes which have "real world" outcomes and goals.
Educational needs
The educational demands for these "vocational" modules is to ensure theyare part of the main educational examination system within the UK, being approved by QCF thanks to a number of hard working and dedicated people who can see the value of such modules and certifications. A
cademy courses are embedded within the UK examination framework enabling Attainment targets points, funding and UCAS points (up to 360) can all be gained. The courses exist within Edexcel (BTEC QCF) levels 2, 3, and 4 OCR (PROCOM) levels 2 and 3 and City & Guilds courses. They also formulate modules in some Apprenticeships. 
IDC report
Best Practice document
Student success stories