GroupWatcher
The City and Guilds course is reasonable and both the Aviation Studies and Operations/Dispatch are the basis of our Company training at the moment. They are C&G accredited which is a recognised vocational qualification. AVTECH, provide a correspondence course, ask around and form your own opinion.
My Company will be moving over to the Glasgow College of Nautical Studies course in September who are a JAROPS approved ATPL college. They will be providing a correspondence course to the ICAO Flight Operations Officer/Aircraft Dispatcher Licence syllabus ICAO Dco7192 D3. This course is in fact, what we should have been doing all along in this Country. It is very close to the ATPL studies in many areas and is of course the international standard. It is, in my view, superior to the C&G course by a long way.
As I have mentioned before on this forum, the CAA issued a FODCOM last year which notified carriers that they are considering adopting the above ICAO syllabus as the training standard for UK operations officers in the near future, hence our move to the ICAO standard.
My recommendation is to wait and do the ICAO FOO licence course in September.