ASA Adjudication on Metropolitan International Schools Ltd

Ad

A TV ad, for IT courses, stated “If your job is boring you to tears get on the SkillsTrain today … Every year thousands of people come aboard to gain industry recognised qualifications for better prospects, more money and opportunity. With SkillsTrain you control how fast you learn and with total support in your own home you won’t have to give up your job to complete your training. You could be qualified in nine months. You could be earning anything between thirty and fifty thousand pounds a year. Now there’s a good reason to quit your job. Whatever IT career you dream of, SkillsTrain can put you on the right track.”

Issue

A viewer complained that the ad was misleading because it exaggerated the earnings participants were likely to achieve on completion of the advertised courses.

BCAP TV Code

Response

SkillsTrain said they provided a number of different IT training courses, some of which were aimed at computer technicians, network engineers and web designers, and others that taught the IT skills necessary for those in non-IT specific roles such as office administrators and personal assistants.  They asserted that statements such as "Whatever IT career you dream of, SkillsTrain can put you on the right track" in the ad made it clear to viewers that the training might lead to a wide range of jobs.   SkillsTrain pointed out that, although the ad had been aired over 7,000 times to date and had been seen by approximately ten million people, only one complaint had been received.

SkillsTrain said the ad did not suggest that the quoted figures were a starting salary achievable on completion of the advertised courses.   They said the delay of several seconds on the voice-over between the separate statements "You could be qualified in nine months" and "You could be earning anything between thirty and fifty thousand pounds a year" made it clear to customers that there was no conjunction claimed between the two.  They claimed the message was that those who acquired the skills taught would gain access to careers in which they could earn the sums quoted, and that they did not believe any viewer could realistically have interpreted the ad to mean they would be guaranteed a salary in that range on completion of a course.  They argued that neither they nor any training organisation could guarantee that successful participants would obtain any job at all, let alone a certain salary, and that nothing in the language of the ad suggested that.  They maintained that, furthermore, all viewers would recognise that the salary attainable by an individual would depend on a wide range of factors, such as previous experience and ability, but that it was important to state a general salary range in the ad to give consumers some background information as to the nature of the course and what they might gain from it.

SkillsTrain explained that because they offered a wide range of courses it would be impossible to state and substantiate a precise range of salaries that could be achieved across every single future career, especially as they would not be able to predict every job in which the skills they taught might be used.    They said viewers would be aware of the wide range of possible uses of IT skills and that, in their view, they would understand the £30,000 to £50,000 range to be a general indication of the sorts of salaries that might be achievable.  They pointed out that the salary range was referred to in a tentative way: "You could be earning...".  

They said they provided the Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre (BACC) with substantiation for the claims made before submitting the ad for clearance.  The substantiation consisted of a list of salaries, achievable in IT jobs that referred to the specific qualifications they offered, that they had sourced from the independent industry benchmark of an IT jobs website. The salaries ranged from £30,291 to £65,598.   They also sent information from the website that listed the thirty most popular IT skills required in job ads and the average salaries that could be achieved using those skills.  They pointed out that the salaries ranged from £37,176 to £67,948, which, they felt, suggested that the claims in the ad had been modest.  

The BACC endorsed SkillsTrains arguments.  They said the ad had been aired regularly since December 2006.  They confirmed that they had received substantiation that showed average salaries over a three-month period taken from a major IT recruitment website.  They said the SkillsTrain syllabus showed they offered courses covering the jobs specified in the substantiation, along with many others.  They believed the ad did not imply that the quoted salaries would be immediately available to all on completion of a course, but rather that those were the sorts of salaries available to those who went on to choose a career in IT.  They added that the wording "could", in their opinion, tempered the claim and showed the salaries were not automatically available to all.

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA noted SkillsTrains argument that the quoted figures did not refer to starting salaries, but, rather, represented earnings that could be achieved in careers that used the IT skills they taught.  We also noted their claim that viewers would understand that future earnings would depend on the type of course taken and the career pursued thereafter.

We noted the substantiation showed that some IT qualifications offered by SkillsTrain could lead to a job with an average salary within the quoted range.  We also noted, however, they offered other qualifications such as N+ (for Network Engineers) and A+ (for PC Engineers) that were not listed in the substantiation, which they estimated on their website would lead to jobs with typical salaries of substantially less than £30,000 per year.  We considered that viewers would realise that people who obtained the qualification were not guaranteed to get jobs within the advertised salary range because other factors such as an applicants experience and other skills would influence their success in getting a job.  We considered, however, that the statement "you could be earning anything between ..." implied that a salary of at least the minimum sum could generally be attainable by those who obtained an IT qualification at SkillsTrain.  We also considered that the overall impression given by the voice-over "You could be qualified in nine months.  You could be earning anything between thirty and fifty thousand pounds a year" was that a salary within that range could be achieved immediately after qualification.  We concluded that the claims were likely to mislead viewers.

The ad breached CAP (Broadcast) TV Advertising Standards Code rules 5.1 (Misleading advertising), 5.2.1 (Evidence) and 5.2.2 (Implications)

Action

We told SkillsTrain not to use the salary range in future advertising.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Broadcast)