Telford-based ANTA Education has recently moved into a new suite of offices on Stafford Park, the private training provider has used the opportunity to look back at its growth.
Sometimes you can look back on a moment in time that changed the course of a project, or a business or your life in general.
But the story of ANTA Education Ltd, a private training provider in Shropshire can certainly look back to March 2020 and see how everything changed and sending them along a successful path.
ANTA Education have recently moved into a new suite of offices in Stafford Park, Telford. But from August 2019 to March 2020, the business existed solely from the spare room of its sole employee, Managing Director Craig Howard. After leaving an advancing career in further education, Craig decided to go it alone and make his own mark on the industry. The reasons behind the move aren’t relevant but, what was a positive career journey like many, had become a negative one, so something had to change.
ANTA Education, named after the initials of Craig two children, initially began as a recruitment and training business, supporting teachers and assessors into further education jobs. Which until March 2020 was ticking over ok. However, there was always a part of the business that needed to exist to help unemployed job seeking adults into work. Something Craig had experienced for nearly 10 years previous, helping hundreds of adults into work.
Bidding for contracts in any sector isn’t easy, especially in education where we need to show that we can make a difference to individuals rather than teach for the sake of teaching. In January 2020 Craig wrote an application to bid for an European Social Fund (ESF) community grant, managed in Shropshire and Herefordshire by the Telford-based charity Landau. The application proposed that ANTA education could deliver mental health awareness training to job seekers, to help them understand the impact and effects on mental health when trying to find work. Little did ANTA Education or Landau know what was about to happen in March 2020 that would have an enormous impact on all of our Mental Health.
Coronavirus lockdown, as we all know started in March 2020. The job market crashed, companies shut their doors and no one was recruiting anymore. So as a recruitment business, ANTA Education was dead. However, April 2020 saw the announcement of new ESF community grant offers to Shropshire, ANTA Education had won a small pot of funding to trial their mental health work confidence programme and the business was given an invaluable lifeline.
Working closely with Landau, ANTA Education successfully completed the first round of funding, supporting more than 30 people over the following 6 months. So successfully that the team at Landau were able to offer ANTA a second round of funding in Autumn 2020. ANTA at this point was able to employ help, growing from 1 employee to 3 by the end of the year. Delivering accredited training courses online for job seekers gave them a great proposition, something that other training providers were slow to catch up with.
Fast forward to summer 2022. ANTA Education has now worked with Landau on more than 9 different projects. Supporting hundreds of people into employment and helping boost their confidence through a variety of different qualifications. From May 2022 ANTA Education and Landau are proud to be partnering on their biggest collaboration yet. Supported by ESF and National Lottery community fund BBO (Building Better Opportunities) will be working throughout Shropshire to help people into work through training over through to March 2023.
ANTA Education in 2022 has become a stable business. A training provider that can offer support to job seekers of all levels, with growth plans for the future. Now employing 8 staff, ANTA Education’s growth is thanks to partnership working and an honest desire to make a difference.
With projects starting outside of Shropshire, in Herefordshire as well as Staffordshire and the West Midlands. ANTA Education’s partnership network is growing. But it’s thanks to the faith of Landau back in 2020 and their ongoing support, a business that could have closed its doors due to the pandemic continues to grow. Giving both companies a huge opportunity to make a difference in multiple ways to job seekers throughout the region.
The story of ANTA Education’s first three years trading proves that with good people around you and with the right determination, anything is possible. You’ve just got to take the opportunities in front of you and never give up.
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