LONDON - November 15, 2006 - One training centre has moved to the head of the class. Quark Inc. announced today that the National Printing Skills Centre (NPSC), the business division of Leicester College and the leading provider of unique professional training for the print and graphic communications industries in the UK, has upgraded to QuarkXPress 7 across its entire organisation. The NPSC, which has been awarded the highest training accolade achievable as a Centre of Vocational Excellence (CoVE) in Print Skills, prides itself in keeping pace with technological advances within the industry, and its decision to upgrade so rapidly to QuarkXPress 7 reflects its approach to education. The NSPC offers an extensive portfolio of training courses in digital media, multi-media, and prepress, press, and post-press that equip students with the necessary skills to thrive in today's dynamic and competitive industry. It is vital that students are trained in the latest technology and industry trends, and the NPSC and Quark have collaborated to ensure this goal is achieved. At the beginning of the current academic year, QuarkXPress 7 was implemented across the entire network and was also integrated into all of the relevant 21courses at both the NPSC and Leicester College. "The NPSC aims to deliver effective training courses that are relevant to the ever-changing marketplace environment. The feedback we are getting from our students is that QuarkXPress 7 is a very positive step forward for Quark. They feel that it is easy to use and are impressed with all the new features - in particular with Job Jackets, as it makes it easier for them to work together, optimise design, and minimise production errors," said Damian Breen, education officer at Leicester College. "It is important that we work with the key industry players, and our relationship with Quark is instrumental in providing the latest technology to our students." QuarkXPress 7 supports a range of output formats, including PDF/X, Job Definition Format (JDF), and Personalized Print Markup Language (PPML), and is designed to support industry standards as they emerge - a capability that is of huge importance to the NPSC. The students are impressed with the Job Jackets feature, which helps enforce job specifications by linking projects to synchronized, dynamically updateable design specifications that include everything from style sheets and colors to page size and count. Ed Ewing, Quark sales director, Northern Europe, said, "We are delighted that such a respected and well-known educational institution as Leicester College has chosen to strengthen its relationship with Quark. The NPSC is committed to nurturing the next generation of designers and press and prepress professionals, and Quark welcomes the opportunity to support the NPSC as much as possible to achieve this goal."