I am extremely proud to lead NCG, one of the country’s largest college groups. We’re made up of seven colleges across a national footprint, with over 2,500 colleagues supporting more than 40,000 learners towards a successful future across the country.
With a mission to enable social mobility and economic prosperity for all our learners and communities, having the right people with the experience and talent to lead our colleges and our colleagues is absolutely crucial. Finding talented leaders, helping them to develop and enabling them to drive the success of our colleges is something that I am particularly passionate about and it’s something we’re really focused on at NCG.
Right now, we have five rare and exciting opportunities to join our colleges as Assistant Principals. These roles are part of new ambitious plans to strengthen our college leadership teams, providing the support and challenge for our colleagues that will help us to achieve the ambitions we have set for ourselves in our Strategy Towards 2030.
So, what does being a leader at NCG really mean?
It means being dedicated to helping people fulfil their ambitions. It means working in an innovative way and within a unique structure and culture that provides opportunities you may not find elsewhere.
Our national footprint is both NCG’s biggest strength and challenge. Our seven colleges are focused on the specific needs of their different communities and the economies around them, but all our talented and passionate team of colleagues work together as ‘One NCG’, working collaboratively in some way to share expertise and support each other. Our colleagues may work with different learners in individual colleges, but the work we do together is what helps us make a difference to people across the country.
For our college principalship teams this means providing leadership at their local colleges and working as part of the broader leadership community across our Group; a network of colleagues in the same role at other colleges in our Group. This model provides opportunities to work closely with peers and a support network for those new to the role.
We know that opportunities in Lewisham are very different to those in Carlisle, and that there are different economic priorities in Kidderminster to Newcastle. But having an extended team of colleagues spread across the country is a fantastic resource to have – drawing on each other’s different backgrounds and experiences to offer each other a real support system. That’s something that can often be hard to find in smaller, standalone colleges.
It’s a fantastic set-up for innovation and progress too. Our college-based leadership teams lead projects right across our Group – whether they are supporting students’ mental health, developing part of our curriculum, or focusing on a community initiative. They collaborate, communicate weekly and innovate to share best practice and ensure students from all our colleges can benefit from great initiatives that start as an idea in just one of them.
Our positive culture, our ethos of ‘One NCG’ and the shared goals of colleagues across the Group to provide high-quality education to our learners were all highlighted in our last Ofsted report too. So, we know it makes a real difference to our learners and our outcomes.
Because it’s so important, we really believe in developing talent from within. That’s why we launched our own Leadership Hub, a development programme for NCG colleagues that aims to instil a supportive and inclusive culture across our Group and support our strategic objectives. I am thrilled with its success and so far, we’ve had more than 300 colleagues complete the programme.
How do we know this approach works?
Well, many of the colleagues in our existing college leadership teams have progressed from elsewhere within NCG – a really great example of how a Group like ours can create and provide opportunities that smaller, standalone colleges may not.
Our current Executive Principal of People and Culture, Gerard Garvey, joined the Group as Principal of Newcastle Sixth Form College in 2015 and was seconded to Lewisham College for 18 months before moving into his current role, where he focuses on developing our people and making NCG a fantastic place to work.
One of Newcastle College’s Assistant Principals, Lisa Hoseason – who has been with NCG for almost 20 years – recently moved to head up West Lancashire College. Lisa started working in classroom support and studied her teaching qualifications at Newcastle College alongside her job. Her leadership journey at NCG is a wonderful success story that really highlights how we value and develop our colleagues.
“I’ve been offered so many opportunities working at NCG and I’ve always been really supported and encouraged to develop and progress. Now, working to support colleagues and learners at West Lancashire College, I have really felt the benefits of the way our college leadership teams work together. I’ve not only felt supported in the change, but I’ve really been able to see the wider impact that the work we do together has on our learners and our communities. It’s brilliant.”
Lisa Hoseason
Joining one of our college leadership teams means being part of a local community, supporting and responding to local people, employers and stakeholders. As part of NCG, you will have the support, autonomy and accountability to meet these local needs at the same time as delivering Group strategies and priorities, and helping us to achieve the objectives of our Strategy Towards 2030.
The most exciting part of being an Assistant Principal at NCG is the chance to work collaboratively with colleagues up and down the country, leading on ambitious initiatives that will create life-changing opportunities for our learners, with the freedom to grow, develop and feel truly supported as you do your best work.
Having worked in education for more than twenty years, I absolutely know that there are talented further education leaders with the vision and passion for excellence that would be the perfect fit for NCG. So, if we sound like something you would love to be part of, we want to hear from you!
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