I keep an eye on the TES staffroom forum which has had some long running threads on the Diplomas. Many of them of late have been against the introduction of the Diploma, particularly the IT Diploma. But one of the most recent contributions to this thread from Julia40 puts the employers' perspective eloquently:

"I'd like to bump back into this thread a very valid point made by Myponyislittle (Post 145). I've just looked at the entry level job specs for the companies mentioned by the other posters. IT employers like those mentioned appeal strongly to the young boys who currently choose IT at school, yet even those companies require of their entry level recruits a broader range of skills and experience than a simple aptitude for programming.

I liked her choice of link, which neatly illustrates the point she made. I don't know the answer to the question she poses but, given comments made by an older and more experienced Andrew Oliver in this interview http://video.e-skills.com/frontend/videoplayer.html?video... , I'm prepared to bet that the employers that contributed to the design of the IT Diploma have a broader base than is suspected by posters here.

For a more conventional IT employer's take, try Judy Stapleton's presentation here http://www.e-skills.com/Diploma-in-IT/1931

I work in the IT industry and I also spend a lot of time working with local schools to support schemes like CC4G, Science and Engineering Ambassadors etc. I would like to think that the Diploma in IT will develop students who can fill a very real recruitment gap. Posters here have argued that those who are currently attracted to study IT at school are well served by existing qualifications. The IT industry isn't trying to replace those courses.

I think that what's needed is a format that has the same collaborative design AND delivery as the ITBM http://www.e-skills.com/itmb/1754 but which targets younger students. Yes, R&D companies like my employer need recruits with very strong technical skills, with a solid grounding in maths and science, but they also need recruits who can work effectively in distributed teams. Every day our staff have to work with colleagues and our clients who may be based anywhere around the globe. We don't select recruits who will only ever be capable programmers, and in any case, programming is a small subset of the roles that we need to fill. If we need a short-term, quick skills fix, we'd hire a contractor. Our permanent recruits need to demonstrate wider interests and management potential because we will be investing an awful lot of time, energy and money in their ongoing training, so we want staff who will develop their careers with us.

Now I know that someone is going to say that schools can deliver this type of course because they don't have any IT employers on their doorstep. That isn't a difficult problem to solve. Our clients aren't IT companies yet they depend on IT and their IT staff. In addition, the companies that have offered their support to e-skills are real IT employers who operate globally. Distance is relative. "

I think these sort of employer perspectives are shared by other employment sectors - certainly the employers of engineering graduates.
The fact is that we are not turning out engineering graduates largely because they are not sensitised to engineering at school.
The Diplomas should help with that.