A £13 million investment in two new state-of-the-art teaching facilities has been hailed as transformational for Stoke on Trent College – but it is only part of the unfolding story.
Here, CEO and Principal Lisa Capper MBE explains how the college is playing an increasingly expanding role in driving the local economy and equipping people with the skills to help businesses grow.
Developing local partnerships with businesses is at the heart of what we do as a college.
Our aim is to ensure we have in place the right further education programmes for young people and adults whether that is the new T Levels, Apprenticeships, short courses for adults at work, or community learning opportunities to get others back in to learning.
At the College we are focused on careers, not courses, and progression to a good job, further or higher education or to an employer career pathway is our version of success.
It is only by being responsive to the skills needs of businesses and organisations can we facilitate sustained businesses success that will grow the local economy and attract inward investment for the City.
We are not looking to do this alone: we work very closely with partner organisations such as Staffordshire and Keele Universities, Stoke-on-Trent City Council and Staffordshire County and the Chambers of Commerce as well as with other education providers.
Our most significant partner is local industry who we consult with and who help us to understand skills gaps in the area and the skills needed for future growth.
Stoke on Trent itself is built on a history and culture of skills and there has never been a better time to reinvent this skills landscape. The City needs to develop the base of higher level skills to further support its successfully and fast growing economy.
We are very much a technical skills college, offering courses ranging from Construction and the Built Environment, Health and Social Care, Digital and Creative, Engineering and STEM and many more.
Thanks to a £38m investment at our Burslem Campus we have the very best training facilities to prepare students for their careers in industry in construction and green technologies, in engineering and STEM and recently in electric vehicle.
I often describe the facilities there as the best-kept secret in Stoke-on-Trent and when we take people to see the industry standard equipment and facilities available it is often a real eye opener to what the College can offer to the area. Our Cauldon campus has similar calibre of expertise and facilities for our Digital and Creative programmes and public services.
Many employers also tell us that although young people come to them with good and well-developed technical skills, they often lack the workplace skills sometimes called the ’softer skills’.
We pride ourselves on our ability to embed and support the development of these skills – such as problem solving, personal organisation, customer service and communication, team working and time management and punctuality – all things that employers look for when recruiting.
Currently, we have just under 2,000 16-to-18-year-olds enrolled on full-time courses and we have around 5,000 adults participating in a range of full time and part time programmes
Many of the adults who come to us are looking to upskill and gain higher level skills and qualifications that they perhaps didn’t achieve when they were younger, or to return to work after an absence or employees looking to augment their skills or upskill.
Again, we plan and prepare these opportunities in partnership with businesses and organisations to meet their needs and therefore paving the way for progression into vacancies with honed skills and an understanding of that industry or workplace.
For instance, we are working with the University Hospital of North Midlands to provide English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) training to many of their newly-recruited clinical and non-clinical employees.
I have been in the role as CEO and Principal for just over a year now and I am delighted with the partnerships we have forged in the City and the County and the contribution the College is making to the local ambition for skills and community cohesion.
I believe our committed and skilled teams have taken great strides forward and this was recently rewarded with the Ofsted good grading received in December 2022, and applauded by our students and partners.
As part of our new Capital Development Programme, we will have our new teaching buildings in place by the end of next year and the right skills and facilities to teach across a broad spectrum of sectors such as our new construction surveying facility to support the new T Level.
One of the things I am most proud of is the active role we are playing in the regeneration initiatives taking place in the area. From Silicon Stoke to Levelling Up we are always looking to make a real contribution for our students and communities.
Our commitment to adult numeracy is a good example of this where we are leading the promotion of a national initiative ‘Multiply’ for the City and providing courses to a range of adults in workplaces and community settings against the target of 9 million in England lacking basic maths skills.
We recently helped deliver ‘Regeneration Brainery’ an event supported by the City Council and Capital&Centric, the developers behind the £60 million Goods Yard project.
This helped 20 students from our college learn from some of the best regeneration and property professionals in the business to enhance their employability skills and career prospects and receive opportunities and immersion into industry.
These are good examples of how Levelling Up projects can leave a positive lasting legacy on the area and demonstrates how the college has a crucial role to play in levelling up through skills.
