Colleges of the South East Midlands
Education as
collaboration – a major campaign to boost region’s businesses
Colleges across the south-east Midlands are launching a high-profi le campaign to help businesses fi nd the skilled people they so desperately need. Bedford, Barnfield, Milton Keynes, Moulton and
Northampton Colleges, supported by the Department for Education (DfE), have banded together to fund wide- ranging research into what companies want and how they can better meet those needs through the training they provide. T e group, known as Colleges of the South East Midlands (CoSEM) already educates and trains almost 56,000 learners and engages with 8,500 employers. Principal and CEO of Milton Keynes College Sally Alexander says the fi rst aim of the project is to discover the best ways to encourage companies to come forward to talk to them. She said: “Once we actually get to speak to business leaders, they’re often surprised at how much we can do for them. Our biggest problem is people who’ve not had much to do with colleges don’t really know what we do.
“Government and the media are generally more
focused on schools and universities; we need to be heard above the noise.” Principal and CEO of Moulton College, Corrie Harris,
says the quality of specialist teaching is exceptionally high: “Most of our staff are people with industry expe- rience, and many still work in those sectors. T ey’re not just blackboard teachers, they’re people who understand the requirements of the workplace because they’ve lived it themselves. T ey speak the same language as employers who need help with training, from agriculture to digital to construction, engineering or health. Often, employers don’t realise working with a college can help with a whole range of staffi ng problems. “T ey might look to take on an apprentice who will study
with us while also working for them. It might be that they want to improve the skill levels of an existing staff mem- ber, or they might just want a work experience student, or someone on a work placement studying for a T Level - the vocational equivalent of A Levels. Whichever approach is going to work best for them, we off er bespoke specialist professional training. T ere are a lot of choices and we want to demystify what’s on off er so employers can see just how much they can gain from talking to us.”
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