The Professional Diploma in Management Studies (PDMS) at Level 5

The Professional Diploma in Management Studies is a nationally-recognised Level 5 professional management qualification, offered through the Edexcel BTEC awarding body. This qualification is suited to managers with a number of years of experience, who are seeking to consolidate their management and leadership skills and knowledge, or establish a strong foundation for further career development. In most organisations these managers are called ‘middle managers’.

The effective manager is one who has mastered the basic management functions: planning and decision making, organising, leading and controlling. This mastery comes through combining academic training and development with ‘hands on’ experience. In respecting this philosophy, we have designed a course that is fully focused on providing an opportunity for learners to apply the principles and skills of management in their workplace. Our flexible learning approach allows maximum management development with minimum disruption to your organisation and individual lifestyle.

How can the PDMS benefit your managers and your business?
The PDMS programme prepares managers to perform confidently and effectively as members of management teams. It has proved to be particularly effective in organisations undergoing significant cultural change, experiencing rapid growth, with a young or relatively inexperienced management team, or where individuals are promoted from technical into management roles. The programme is designed to meet national standards for management in the UK and is internationally recognised.

PDMS course details

This programme is run as a flexible solution comprising selected workshops, directed self-study, and one to one tutorials. It follows our three-step flexible learning methodology:

Step 1: Theoretical knowledge is learned through directed self-study

Step 2: Theoretical knowledge is applied in activity-based workshops

Step 3: Further application to the individual through one-to-one tutorial support and guidance

The programme consists of six practical application-based workshops, each lasting a full day. The workshops run morning and afternoon and take place approximately every eight weeks throughout the programme.

Course outline

This qualification consists of three mandatory core units and seven additional specialist units. These additional units have been selected to provide a specific focus for the course, ie to broaden and deepen the learners’ experience of management skills and knowledge. The course should take about 15 months to complete; this is because of the practical nature of the programme where learners have to show how they have put into practice what they have learned.

Core units

• Personal Development
• Communications at Work
• Leadership

Specialist units

• Financial Awareness
• Managing Change
• Managing Projects
• Winning Teams
• Decision Making and Taking
• Managing a Budget
• Introducing Strategy

Competence Development

The PDMS is designed to allow managers to develop across a range of areas relevant to their present and future roles in their organisation. Each workshop is linked to a work-based assignment that is designed to develop competencies essential for managers in the 21st century. Competencies developed may include:

• acting assertively
• acting strategically
• behaving ethically
• building teams
• improving communications
• focusing on results
• managing change

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