KINGSWOOD PARTNERSHIP

The Kingswood Partnership was among just five award- winning consortia at the National Delivering Diplomas Awards earlier this year, and one of its engineering students, Parag Bhatt, took the title in the Student of the Year category. Our first case study is on the consortium, its engineering offer, and its employer engagement

‘O

ur Engineering Diploma is quite dynamic and that is exactly what a Diploma should be.”

It is easy to see why Ben Rose thinks so

highly of the Diploma in Engineering he has helped to put together. Mr Rose is the 14 to 19 co-ordinator

at the Kingswood Partnership in South Gloucestershire, which won one of the runner- up prizes in the Consortium of the Year category at the National Delivering Diplomas Awards 2010. Mr Rose, together with the consortium’s

business link manager, Ronnie Ward, has enlisted the help and support of a variety of companies to help give students the best possible experiences and put their learning into context. Since the qualification was launched by the

consortium in September 2008, at all three levels, students have benefited from the input of many local and a number of top-name companies within the industry, who have not only offered experience and work placement,

but also contributed to the qualification’s design and development. Mr Rose said: “We have an excellent

balance of engagement with a number of small and medium-sized organisations, as well as big players in the industry such as Airbus and Rolls Royce. We have not found it hard to engage business because our business links manager has been so proactive in this area. “She set up employer forums for each line

of learning, and for engineering this included Atkins Engineering and S&B Automotive as well as a number of smaller local companies. “They looked at the structure of the

Diploma with the staff designing it and, based on their knowledge of what it’s like out there in the real world, were able to guide and advise us on what the content should be.” These forums continue to run to this day,

though now they look at specific aspects of the Diploma and how these can be improved and kept up-to-date with developments within the industry. Currently about 30 employers in the Bristol

and South Gloucestershire area are involved with the consortium – which comprises six secondary schools and the City of Bristol College – in delivering the Diploma in Engineering. Many offer work placements, while others devote time to organising visits, where students can see engineering at work first hand. One such event involved Advanced Diploma

students visiting the SKF Aerospace Division in Clevedon. The company has plants in 40

countries worldwide, and the Clevedon facility specialises in bearings for helicopters, planes and trains. The organisation was one of those that was instrumental in the development of the Diploma in Engineering and has since provided a number of interactive learning activities using modern technology. During their visit, students followed the

progress of one component from start to finish, looking at every operation along the way from raw material to final product. The visit reinforced and put into context areas students had covered in college including materials testing, production and finishing methods, and workplace organisation. One of the most important lessons they learned that day was the importance of rigorous quality control as the product they followed controls the movement of helicopter rotor blades – something that needs to be 100 per cent reliable. Another visit was to University Hospital

Bristol, where students were shown around the various maintenance systems that kept the building operating. These included the boiler house and electrical control centres. Companies also regularly visit the schools

Inspiring: Diploma Student of the Year Parag Bhatt speaks after collecting his award while Ben Rose collects Kingswood’s consortium award from the QCDA’s Alan Clamp (inset)

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and host activities for students. On one occasion, Atkins Engineering worked with learners on building bikes, while S&B Automotive “filled a room with laptops, creating a virtual environment, and asked students to design a gear box”. “Two students actually managed to design

ones that worked, much to the consternation of their teachers who failed,” Mr Rose added.

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