IOT DEBATE
IN ASSOCIATION WITH:
PRESENT: Richard Slater
Lancashire Business View, (Chair)
Sarah Hall Blackpool and Fylde College
Neil Burrows Burnley College
David Hammond Chiptech
Paul Daughtry Boohoo
Jamie Hughes Jellymedia
Morag Davis Nelson and
Colne College Ben Savage
Allan J Hargreaves Linda Dean
Lancashire and Cumbria IOT
Tom Smith Complete Online OVER WORKPLACE NEEDS GETTING TECHNICAL
The Lancashire and Cumbria Institute of Technology (IoT) aims to deliver the best in technical education to provide employers with skilled workforces to boost economic growth.
IOTs are partnerships of colleges, universities and employers backed by a £290m government investment to enable the development of industry-standard facilities and equipment.
Employers are being encouraged to become official partners to directly influence course content to ensure businesses get the workers they need.
Here, seven colleges and three universities have partnered to transform the region through a targeted approach to fuel prosperity. We brought some of those education providers together with employers at Blackpool and Fylde College to discuss the initiative.
What is the Institute of Technology? What is it for?
SH: The Institute of Technology (IoT) is here to ensure that employers get the skilled workforces they need, not just now, but in the future.
It’s also here to ensure students and
apprentices have access to the best facilities, to cutting edge equipment, so they are the best trained that they can be.
We also partner with Edge Hill University, The University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) and Lancaster University, which gives us the research arm to be able to understand what skills we will need in the future,
The most important thing from the employer’s point of view is that they can shape the curriculum because they are the experts. We’ve never partnered in this way before, and we’ve never had this type of investment in looking at skills in the way that we’re doing it.
MD: Collaboration is at the heart of IoT, really listening to employers. That’s what is going to help our learners and get them into the jobs where there are skills needs and gaps.
The IoT is enabling us to take the time to actually listen and to give us the resources to respond effectively to those skills needs. It is a huge opportunity for us, our learners and employers.
There are seven colleges in the network an all have taken a slightly different approach. The
collaboration is working in that we’re all focusing on meeting certain aspects of the skills and needs of the employers that are local to us.
LD: Fundamentally, it’s about prosperity. We have 51,000 businesses in Lancashire and a 1.5 million population that the IoT has the potential to reach.
It is enabling businesses to access very current facilities and equipment and then there is the access to research. So, it is not just about activity today, it’s what’s coming down the track.
It also about prosperity for the workforce as well, because we know in Lancashire and in the North West that fewer people have level four and five qualifications than is the national picture.
If individuals have those qualifications, they’re more than likely to secure well-paying employment and to progress.
NB: The best decision we made in our early days was to say we needed to collaborate with colleges and businesses across all Lancashire. It has taken us three years go get to where we are and it has been a journey.
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