P&DM's Certificate and Short Courses

P&DM has consistently offered a wide range of specialised courses designed to meet the needs of practising public and development managers. These courses are structured to provide practitioners with the opportunity to upgrade their skills and knowledge in specific management areas:

• Health
• Education
• Development
• Housing
• Public Finance
• Public Management
• Policing
• Humanitarian Assistance
• Social Security
• Defense and Peacekeeping

The school offers two types of short courses. Certificates of Competence, which are usually 120 hours contact time during which participants are assessed by a range of methods which include group work, presentations, individual assignments and formal written examinations. Certificates of Attendance normally comprise 18-24 hours contact time, and are not competence assessed.

With an increasing awareness that management development can more effectively take place within an organisation as a whole, the school has concentrated its short course efforts into a limited number of generic courses which develop critical management baseline knowledge. These are the Professional Certificate in Public Management, the Certificate Course in Project Management for the Public and Development Sectors, as well as the Programme in Leadership and Management for Transformation.

The PCPM is designed to give participants broad band knowledge of the ethos, practice and paradigms of public management, providing a common understanding of the baseline 'best practice' management practices in the public sector. From this common ground, specific management training needs can be more effectively addressed.

The Certificate Course in Project Management for the Public and Development Sectors is designed to provide in-depth knowledge of the cycles and processes of project management - with a finer focus than it is possible to provide on generalist management course.

Short courses are delivered in a variety of models, which include single blocks of study, usually associated with certificates of attendance, block release sessions over a number of months, breakfast seminars, or a combination.