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Cisco Academy Program 
Cisco established their academy program in 1997 coming to the UK in 1998, the program offers a hierachical system for training and support.  Cisco Systems through the Cisco Learning Institute trains the Cisco Academy Training Centre (CATC).  The CATC in turn train and support Regional Academies (not geographical region).  Each Regional Academy is responsible for the support and training of Local Academies.  It is the Local Academies that deliver the curriculum courses to the students, community and local businesses.  As a reult of this structure a Regional Academy will also be a Local Academy so it can deliver to its own students and local community.  The Cisco Academy Program courses are embedded within OCR, Edexcel and IT Diploma courses so educational institutions can gain funding and league table points and the students can gain UCAS points if they are proceeding to higher education.  Some other academy programmes avialable do not have a such a structure and deal with the institutions directly and hence there can be less direct support available. 
 
Academy Evolution
All academies would haev received a series of emails and newsletters from Cisco in relation to the changes that are going to take place in 2012. 
  1. All exisiting contracts between Cisco Regional Academies and the Cisco Local Academies will end on 30th June 2012. 
  2. All academies will be required to sign a contract directly with Cisco in March 2012, this will be in the form of an online contract.
  3. After that each Cisco Academy will need to sign up with a Cisco "Academy Support Centre (ASC)" by 1st July 2012.  The ASC will undertake the day-to-day support and needs to be completed and signed by the end of your existing contract. See what GRA has to offer in terms of support and helping your academy get the best out of the programme.
  4. In terms of Instructor Training the Cisco Academy will need to link itself to "Instructor Training Centre (ITC)" who will offer a range of courses and have these published (training schedule). The ITC will also be a port of call for instructor support for a year after the instructor has completed their training.
  5. An ASC will not offer Instructor Training unless it is also an ITC, as such there are a broader set of support and training contracts available for the Cisco Academy to adopt:
  6. Band "A" support for IT Essentials. (no instructor training included)
  7. Band "B" support for CCNA, CCNA Security and CCNP. (no instructor training included)
  8. Band "C" support for CCNA, CCNA Security and CCNP with 10 days of Cisco Instructor Training included.
  9. Band "D" same as band "C" but additional support for: Cisco Entrepreneur Institute Academy, VMware IT Academy, EMC Academic Initiative etc
  10. Bands A and B will be available from an ASC whilst bands C and D will be available from an ASC that is also an ITC.