The Further Education Trust for Leadership (Fetl) has announced the names of the first five organisations that it has chosen to receive a total of £270,000 in grants to fund research.
Organisations with an interest in FE were invited by Fetl in November last year to apply for grants worth up to £100,000 each, to fund research into sector leadership issues, with entries closing a month later.
The names of the grant recipients were announced this evening (March 10) at Kings Place arts and conference centre, London, after the inaugral Fetl lecture by Dr James Krantz, principal of New York-based consultants Worklab, on the subject of ‘Leaders or leadership — the century of the system’.
The winning organisations, chosen ahead of 51 other applicants, are the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP), Coleg Gwent, EMFEC, the University of Hull, and Working Well.
Dame Ruth Silver (pictured), Fetl honorary president, said: ‘The five projects selected reflect both the complexity and curiosity of the sector but, more importantly, focus on areas of wider contemporary concern and interest to all.”
The chosen organisations will work on their research projects over the next two years.
EMFEC, a membership body for providers in the East Midlands, will develop new models of leadership through innovative governance, while AELP will investigate the impact of new leaders on the leadership of thinking in FE.
Coleg Gwent will look at the impact of austerity measures on provision and in particular the role of governors in fostering a culture of enterprise and innovation. The University of Hull will aim to develop a practical understanding of behaviours and approaches adopted by ethical leaders in FE.
Working Well, a private sector company that specialises in organisational development, will develop a series of strategic seminars that focus on psychoanalysis and systems thinking and their applicability to FE.
Jill Westerman chair of Fetl, said “I am pleased that the grants are able to fund projects that I feel will make a real difference to the leadership of thinking in FE and skills.”
It comes after Fetl, which was launched last summer with a budget of up to £5.5m left over following the closure of the Learning and Skills Improvement Service, announced in January the names of the first four individuals it had chosen for research fellowships.
Alex Day MBE, Ruth Allen, Tim Ward and Ann Creed will get up to £40,000 each to fund their research on attitudes to risk in leadership of sixth form colleges, leadership challenges among third sector providers, the impact of leadership on part-time teachers and fostering creative leadership in FE.
Further Education Commissioner Dr David Collins (pictured) has revealed how a London college’s projected bank balance was overestimated by £3m as he called on Skills Minister Nick Boles to place it into administered status.
Mr Boles followed Dr Collins’ advice on Greenwich Community College after he told the minister of “serious problems — both in terms of the quality of what is on offer and its worsening budget position”.
Among the many problems identified by Dr Collins was a year-end cash balance of £3.5m having been predicted for 2014/15, which following the appointment of an “experienced interim finance director” was revised to £500,000 after he predicted the college would make a loss of more than £3m.
“There are several reasons for this situation but the most noticeable lies in archaic staff contracts and poor staff utilisation,” he said.
Andrew Murdock, the college’s finance director and vice principal, told FE Week: “The commissioner raises a number of issues which have been acted on.
“The college has taken immediate steps to address the projected deficit by cutting all unnecessary expenditure and making plans to reduce its long term cost base. This includes a review of staff costs and utilisation.
“The college is committed to improving its financial health and is working closely with the Skills Funding Agency to that end.”
Dr Collins was sent into the 5,000-learner South East London college in January — a month after Ofsted gave it inadequate ratings across headline fields with inspectors reporting: “The principal and governing body have not succeeded in ensuring that all students receive high quality education and training, or in improving the college’s performance.”
And an Ofsted monitoring visit a few weeks after Dr Collins’ visit highlighted little in the way of progress.
His report, out this week, told how the board had been “insufficiently rigorous” with an “undemanding” culture and “minimal questioning of data or challenge”. He also said high-ranking resignations following the Ofsted report had left the college without anybody of more than three years’ experience on its board. The clerk also resigned last month.
Dr Collins revealed the college’s self-assessment report had “painted an over optimistic picture”. “The strengths were overstated, weaknesses minimised and judgements founded on scant evidence,” he said.
“Little acknowledgement had been made of, or attention given, to the worryingly low and declining student success rates.”
He also said managers viewed the college as “‘not knowing where it is going” and he branded the Post Inspection Action Plan (PIAP) as “unfit for purpose”.
Mr Boles said: “Given these weaknesses, I have decided that the FE Commissioner should conduct a Structure and Prospects Appraisal that will consider what is the best solution for learners, employers and the local community.
“As part of the Appraisal the FE Commissioner will consider and advise me on what governance and leadership arrangements should be put in place to support the transition to any new arrangements.
“In the meantime, a revised Post Inspection Action Plan and Financial Recovery Plan will enable the college to begin to address the full range of issues identified by the FE Commissioner and by Ofsted. Progress against these plans will be monitored through monthly case conferences.”
Richard Bourne OBE, chair of the college corporation, said: “The corporation is actively responding to the points made by the commissioner in his letter to the chair.
“The corporation has not waited for the next set of meetings to be set up but has started the actions required to bring about the changes needed in the college.
“We look forward to participating in the structure and prospects appraisal process. The board is aware of our role to ensure the community of South East London is well served with high quality FE in the future.”
An “excessive emphasis” on apprenticeships as a means to combat youth unemployment risks painting them as a “second class option” and “damages the brand”, a key group of MPs has warned.
The committee’s inquiry was launched last July and held four oral sessions in Parliament and received more than 90 written submissions. The report will be launched by committee chair Graham Stuart at the FE Week Apprenticeship Annual Conference in London this morning (Monday).
The report says: “It is important to ensure that growth does not sacrifice quality, as apprenticeships should always require substantial training and always deliver a substantial uplift in earning power for the apprentice. Level two apprenticeships that comply with these principles should be retained.
“Excessive emphasis on apprenticeships as a means to combat youth unemployment risks reinforcing the myth that apprenticeships are a second class option and damages the apprenticeship brand.”
The report criticises “inadequate” careers advice and schools, and calls for an “urgent review” of incentives for schools to provide good careers advice, adding that it must recognise that “the mantra of ‘trusting schools’ does not work when the interests of schools and young people are not aligned”.
It also calls for a review of the government’s Trailblazers programme, which it warns is “at risk of being dominated by larger companies at the expense of SMEs”. On funding reforms, it warns that further delays could “undermine efforts both to drive up quality and engage more employers”, and calls for SMEs to be given a choice between administering funding themselves or contracting out to providers.
On traineeships, the report says the impact is unclear, and calls for greater clarity from the government on the success criteria for the programme.
Association of Employment and Learning Providers chief executive Stewart Segal said: “We are very pleased with the committee’s conclusions and recommendations, especially the MPs’ belief that high quality level two apprenticeships should remain part of the programme because they offer a ladder of opportunity to further progression.
“It is also encouraging to see the recognition that apprenticeships are not simply a tool for solving youth unemployment but are a programme for improving the skills of those in employment.”
David Corke, director of education and skills policy of the Association of Colleges (AoC), said: “The education committee’s report offers considered recommendations for the government to ensure that the quality of provision improves alongside increasing the number of apprenticeships offered by employers.
“Every apprenticeship is a job with training so employers, in both the public and private sector, are the essential ingredients. The Committee rightly points to the need to engage SMEs through awareness of the benefits of apprenticeships to their business.
“With participation by 16 to 19-year-olds currently remaining low, we need to ensure that young people are offered impartial information about the options available for them when they leave education. If, as a country, we are going to increase the number of young people opting for professional and technical education and choosing apprenticeships then we must improve careers education in schools.
“In addition, we agree with the education committee on the importance of retaining level two apprenticeships in the cases where they are respected by employers. It is too early to conclude on the success of traineeships as they are still in their infancy. We’d like to see two year level two pre-apprenticeships established to help 16 and 17-year-olds prepare for a full apprenticeship.”
The sky was no limit for ex-college learner Stephen Greenall as he scaled the heights of Canada’s second tallest building to prove he could take on one of the toughest jobs in the world, writes Billy Camden.
Looking down from the 180-metre high Plaza Bank Building skyscraper, Stephen Greenall’s mind turned back to the comfort of his Warrington Collegiate circle of friends.
Stephen Greenall cleaning the second largest building in Toronto, the Plaza Bank Building
The 19-year-old’s journey from a BTec national diploma in aviation operations to the top of Canada’s second highest building, in Toronto, features on BBC3 tomorrow night.
He applied to take part in the World’s Toughest Jobs programme and was accepted to take on the role of window cleaner.
“When the BBC told me I was going to Toronto as a skyscraper window cleaner. I was shocked, excited, nervous and speechless,” said Stephen.
“At times I just wanted to be back with my friends at college. I went through a whole rollercoaster of emotions,” he added.
Filming took place over the course of two months from March last year, with Stephen completing his college studies upon his return to the UK.
Each of the six 60-minute episodes follows the journey of three 18 to 24-year-old Brits as they leave the UK in a bid to take on some of the world’s toughest jobs.
The second largest building in Toronto, the Plaza Bank Building
Stephen met up with his episode’s two co-stars — Dom Monk, aged 25, and Darci Tesfay, 23 — in Canada and after intensive training, lots of practice and health and safety checks the job began.
“When I was working up so high I felt like I could see the whole world. It was absolutely breath-taking,” said Stephen.
“As you climb up the ladders you open this little door and all you see is blue sky. The sun feels amazingly close. It just leaves you speechless.”
And his college aviation studies came to his rescue when he needed them the most.
“When I was climbing over the edge of the building I did cry a lot,” said Stephen.
“However once the container started moving, I just went in to cabin crew mode telling myself not to worry, and imagined they were turbulence.”
Diane Lewis, lecturer in aviation at Warrington Collegiate, said: “I’m really proud of Stephen and everything that he’s achieved.
“He was a student who stood out from the start. Outgoing, determined, with a great personality I always knew he would be exceptional both in the classroom and beyond.”
World’s Toughest Jobs will be televised on Tuesday, March 10 at 9pm.
Main pic: Stephen Greenall at Warrington Collegiate on his aviation course
A Richard Huish College student has hurtled from fourth to second in the world youth rankings for Bobsleighing following two weeks of racing for Great Britain.
George Johnston, aged 16, is the number one youth driver in Britain and is looking in good form to qualify for the 2016 youth Olympics.
He beat competition by 0.56 seconds to win the last race of the Omega Series Races in St Moritz during half term and was announced overall winner.
George, who is studying a sport BTec extended diploma at the Somerset sixth form college, said: “I was really happy with the result because I was one of the fastest in training all week but I wasn’t expecting that to be replicated in the race.”
Main pic: Bobsleighing champion George Johnston, from Richard Huish College
The Skills Funding Agency clawback saga appears to have ended with around 100 of the 600 providers warned they might have to pay back funding actually having to do so. Andy Gannon considers what happened and also whether there’s a bigger picture to look at.
The news last week that just 15 per cent of providers will be subject to a funding clawback from the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) will, sadly, not surprise anyone who has worked in FE for any amount of time.
We have become rather used to our attention being drawn to data systems and funding ‘errors’, even though our natural instinct is to be more concerned with things like teaching and employer engagement.
It is striking that, while the overall number of those ultimately affected is small, nearly 700 providers received the first, rather ill-timed, communication from the SFA before Christmas. Even if only the chief executive of each one was caused a sleepless night or two, that still amounts to quite a lot of professional energy expended.
But the reality, of course, is that, in each of those 700 providers, there will have been a small team of people beavering anxiously away on data throughout the month of January in order to arrive at the conclusion, in many cases, that the clawback amount in total would be less than £500.
In lighter moments, you could be forgiven for thinking that we had just lived through an episode of Yes Minister. The story has it all – ‘bumbling bureaucrats’ pursuing palpably intricate processes which, to anyone in the outside world would seem, at best, unrelated to the business of education and, at worst, downright distracting.
while the FE and skills system has operated in a more and more ‘market-driven’ way over the past two decades, the nature of centralised control has become more and more demanding
There was even the delightful element of timing — cue scenes of hard-pressed provider data managers eating turkey and mince pies while hunched over a computer screen examining ILR fields while the Minister and Sir Humphrey enjoy a luxurious Christmas banquet without a care in the world.
But this is not Yes Minister. Rather, it is the state we find ourselves in because of one ultimate policy contradiction. That contradiction is best summed up as the rather perverse notion that increased freedom breeds increased control.
There is no small irony in the fact that, while the FE and skills system has operated in a more and more ‘market-driven’ way over the past two decades, the nature of centralised control has become more and more demanding.
At the highest level, this is explained away as the need for ‘rigorous accountability’ if professionals are to be allowed to spend public money as they see fit.
However, the real issues go deeper than this — and reveal a fundamental political mistrust of people ‘on the ground’ to manage the very things that they should be best placed to manage themselves.
Just as, with schools, central control extends over the curriculum and the money rather than the system as a whole and making sure that every child can access a good education, so in FE, we have an overly-bureaucratic approach to funding, rather than a consolidated national view on, say, employer engagement and careers advice.
It is very reassuring to hear SFA officials acknowledge the need to simplify and make more predictable their processes — and I have no doubt there is a genuine regret about the way in which this episode has been handled.
But simplification has a habit of making things more complex, and ignores the fact that the processes themselves are often a distraction.
To add insult to injury, the clawback announcements, such as they were, came on the same day as the news that 24 per cent was to be cut from sector budgets in the coming year.
While huge effort has been focused on the microcosmic data detail, a cataclysmic shift will rock the big picture. What was Nero doing while Rome burned?
“I guess research is just about being nosey. Nosey and methodical — that’s what makes a good researcher,” says Dr Fiona Aldridge, assistant director for development and research at the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (Niace).
“I love qualitative data because it’s about people, but then I also love quantitative data because I love numbers. I’m a bit sad like that.”
But, as we chat on the dark day the skills funding letter is published, I get the sense that, with an 11 per cent cut in next year’s adult skills budget, there’s one set of numbers she might not be so keen on.
The problem is, she says, the numbers are being viewed in the wrong way.
Aldridge with father Geoff graduating from Leicester University in 1996
“It’s a really hard time to argue for more money to be spent on anything given public finances, but investment in education is an investment — not a cost,” she insists.
“It’s investing in the skills of people to get jobs, progress in work, to develop the skills to support their home, their community and their society.
“We should be concerned therefore about the impact reducing that investment has on people’s opportunities to take part in learning.
“Of course there are loans around for people who are convinced of the benefits of learning, but for those people who are not yet certain that its valuable to them then it could have a massive impact on numbers.”
Aldridge, aged 39, began working for Niace 18 years ago, almost by accident after being sent there from a temping firm while she worked out what she “wanted to do with my life” – but quickly decided she might have already found it.
“I suppose I loved the idea that it was about people and people’s opportunities to realise their ambitions,” she says.
“You only have to go to Adult Learners’ Week and see the stories of winners to recognise that this is something people recognise has made a real difference to their lives and made a real difference to mine, too.
Aldridge aged 5
“And therefore to work on a policy level or a practical level to help create more and better quality opportunities for adults to learn is just so enthusing and motivating.”
But what really convinced her to stay was an episode in her mid-20s that ends with her being splashed across the front page of the Mail on Sunday.
“It was when a dispersal policy had been introduced and around 400 asylum seekers were sent to Leicester and all the media work was negative,” she explains.
“And we were doing a tiny, tiny piece of work on asylum seekers — the skills and qualifications and experience they were bringing with them.
“And the local paper knew about it and was owned by the Mail — so the headline was ‘NHS gives nurses’ jobs to asylum seekers’.
“Well, we weren’t working with the NHS, and asylum seekers can’t work and we weren’t trying to get them jobs, but apart from that it was right.
“I was really young and just horrified that there was a quote on there that had been taken out of context and Ann Widdecombe said I was increasing Britain’s reputation as a soft touch nation. I thought I was going to get the sack.”
Ann Widdecombe said I was increasing Britain’s reputation as a soft touch nation
Aldridge phoned then Niace chief executive Alan Tuckett.
“And he said: ‘Excellent. I would much rather you get criticised for doing the right thing than applauded for doing the wrong thing’.
“The support, the encouragement and that sense of ‘let’s do the right thing here for learners, take risks but not dump it on you if things go wrong’ made me think that was a place I’d quite like to work.”
And Niace’s emphasis on family learning, where parents learn alongside their children and in turn help them learn, chimed with her own experience of education growing up in Walsall with parents Geoff and Maureen, and younger brother Andrew.
“My parents are from a working class background, with not great educational achievement but a real strong sense of the value of education so they really invested in my education and supported it,” says Aldridge.
“My dad left school at 13 and hadn’t had a great education and went to be a bus driver and he hated it.
From Left: Aldridge’s university friends Clare Gough, Cath Page, Aldridge and Eleanor Bowskill
“He would say to me: ‘You need to work hard at school, because you need to have choices about the job you do’.”
One of her strongest memories, she says, is of him staying up late with her whenever she had to study.
“He was never in a position to be able to help me with my maths A-level, but he would just always be there so that I wouldn’t be on my own for that.”
After passing the 11-plus and attending grammar school, she became the first person in her family to go to university, studying economics at Leicester.
A gap year followed academia and then came the post at Niace, which she has seen grow from 40 people to 65. She has also extended its research work and, she says, expanded its focus from community learning into workplace learning.
Indeed, Aldridge manages the annual participation survey, measuring how many adults throughout the UK are accessing education.
“What always comes out in the survey is that, apart from the massive inequalities for learning, for those who are in those groups that are most unlikely to learn, the place where they are going to get those chances is going to be in work,” she says.
“So actually that’s a key area for us — if we’re interested in adults having the opportunities we had just by going through the system in a particular way then we need to be focussing on work.”
It’s a really hard time to argue for more money to be spent on anything given public finances, but investment in education is an investment — not a cost
But a bigger change for Niace could be looming on the horizon, after the organisation announced a “strategic alliance” with the Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion (Inclusion) – which could, if successful, lead to a merger later in the year.
“I’m really excited about it,” she says.
“I’ve worked with them for quite a long time and it works well, because they have the same approach to work, tackling inequalities and disadvantage.
“And lately we’ve been trying to think more about skills in the workforce and employment systems, and they’ve been doing more work around what we’ve been traditionally doing so we’ve been bumping into each other more.
“For me, an alliance makes complete sense and I’m quite excited about the potential that gives us for an extra offer — I’m really excited about the possibilities.”
And, with an election coming up, the stakes are high.
Coming into the election, she says, “we really need to show the adult skills budget is an investment the country can’t afford not to make”.
“We need people to have the opportunities to take part in learning that will bring benefits to their working lives, their social lives, their families their communities and to the local economy and to be able to make that as easy as possible for employers and individuals and providers,” explains Aldridge.
“It would be great to see some creative ideas on how to make that possible.
“It’s a shame that money dominates everything, but it’s about what we can do within that context to create good, high quality opportunities for people to take part in learning.”
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It’s a personal thing
What is your favourite book, and why?
I don’t have a favourite book, but I love to read. I’ll read a book and really enjoy it, but then just move on. At the moment I’m reading Dominion by CJ Samson, about the dangers of being overly focussed on nationalism — it’s a story that’s meant to be a million miles away from where we are, but it feels scarily close.
Aldridge and husband Ian on their wedding day in 1999
That’s my current favourite book, but it won’t be my favourite book in a month’s time.
I like novels that give you an insight into different people, cultures and possibilities
What do you do to switch off from work?
I have three children so essentially I just walk through my front door and then I’m switched off, because children aren’t very forgiving of the day you might have had at work. I like to read spend time with good friends and family
What’s your pet hate?
I’m naturally optimistic, so I don’t like cynicism. And if I’m doing something I like to put everything into it so I don’t like half-heartedness
If you could invite anyone to a dinner party, living or dead, who would it be?
A good dinner party for me is fun, so I’d like comedians Rob Brydon, Lee Mack and David Mitchell because they’d keep me laughing
all night
What did you want to be when you grew up?
I went through a stage of wanting to be Prime Minister until I saw Spitting Image and then I thought I wouldn’t want anyone to ever do that to me. And then I wanted to be Kate Adie — she just seemed so strong and intelligent and thoughtful
The title of ‘college’ appears to be coming back into sector fashion — and even worth fighting for, just ask Newcastle College principal Carole Kitching. Ruth Sparkes considers whether it, like ‘university’, should be protected.
After news that Newcastle College Group (NCG) successfully, and legally stopped a mystery outfit calling itself Newcastle College Ltd from trading under that name, it’s probably worth considering just what value there is in our institutions’ brands.
Other than one business trying to pass itself off as another, which is a suspect practice to say the least, it’s interesting to consider that some highly regarded and well-established colleges have changed their names — an important part of any brand.
Some colleges have dropped the word ‘college’ from their titles. Indeed, it was a bit of a trend a few years ago, but I think the word college is coming back ‘en vogue.’
I suspect the college rebrand with the most press coverage was Lesoco (or LeSoCo as it had said). Born out of the Lewisham and Southwark colleges’ merger, it has since become Lewisham Southwark College. West Notts College became Vision, now it’s Vision West Nottinghamshire College.
Newcastle College (the real one) is part of this gang, sort of. As the institution grew, it took over or merged with other colleges
and independent training providers, and became NCG.
As I think many of these other colleges at one time or another have claimed, NCG is more than a college.
A cursory glance at its corporate website details its might. It is a collection of FE colleges, a sixth form, a training provider, a free school and more besides.
It boasts a turnover of more than £179m, has the largest Education Funding Agency contract in the UK, its own degree-awarding powers, delivers around 20,000 apprenticeships a year and employs thousands of staff. Arguably, the word ‘college’ is not enough.
Why, I wonder did the former ‘Newcastle College Ltd’ ever take it on? Perhaps it thought it could operate under the radar — that it could piggyback on NCG’s mighty brand. Or maybe it thought NCG was so big, it’d never notice?
Is there an argument for more control over the terms ‘college’, ‘school’ or ‘academy’, to help make sure that everyone understands what sort of learning institution it might be?
But there are plenty of organisations wanting to call themselves a ‘college’ — it is such an accessible word.
Schools call themselves colleges, ‘Anytown Community College’. Some independent learning providers call themselves colleges, and some private colleges that might be legitimate or dodgy ‘visa factories’ have also used the term ‘college.’
Is this practice a deception? Are these institutions deliberately using the term
college to present themselves as something they are not?
Can similar be said for the term ‘academy’? The Royal Academy of Music is a long way from being like the O2 Academies in Bristol, Brixton or Newcastle, and even further away from the Marlowe Academy, in Ramsgate.
And schools, they can be nurseries, primaries, secondaries or even higher education institutions. The AA’s driving school offer, for example, would never be confused with the courses at the London School of Economics (LSE).
So, the only term that is very rarely ‘misused’ for the UK’s education institutions is the word ‘university’.
And that’s because the use of the term ‘university’ in any institution’s title requires the government’s consent.
University is a title that has to be earned, to be applied for and is generally seen as an achievement when the title is eventually bestowed. Ror example Falmouth School of Art, became Falmouth University College and then Falmouth University. King Alfred’s College became University College Winchester, then the University of Winchester.
So, is there an argument for more control over the terms ‘college’, ‘school’ or ‘academy’, to help make sure that everyone understands what sort of learning institution it might be? Would it be better if these titles had to be earned and bestowed like the word university? And what value does the word college really have when so many are prepared to ditch it, even if it is a trial separation?
Stoke on Trent College has welcomed Kevin Smith as its new principal.
Mr Smith, who has more than 25 years’ experience in education, will support chief executive Sarah Robinson, allowing her to dedicate more time to the strategic future of the college, according to a college spokesperson.
In his most recent role as vice principal at Riverside College, in Cheshire, Mr Smith helped lead the college’s 11-month turnaround from Ofsted ‘inadequate’ to ‘good’ by early 2010.
“I am passionate about transforming people’s lives through the power of education; making teaching, learning and assessment our first priority and ensuring that the needs of our learners always come first,” said Mr Smith.
“Among my main aims as principal are to help Stoke on Trent College become the first choice for school leavers, adults and employers across the sub-region and lead the college to become a centre for vocational excellence.”
Mr Smith, whose appointment at the grade two-rated college came around three months after FE Commissioner Dr David Collins visited over financial concerns, brings with him expertise in curriculum and quality following his time with FE Associates, where he provided interim management and performance improvement solutions to more than 100 colleges and independent learning providers.
Ms Robinson, who had previously served as Stoke college principal, said: “Kevin is passionate about high standards within education and his attention to detail in quality improvement makes him a perfect fit for our college.”
Meanwhile, Richard Heatly’s 12 years at the helm of Hereford College of Arts (HCA) is due to end at the end of the academic year.
Before he moved into teaching at the 350-learner specialist college, rated as good by Ofsted in November 2013, he was a maker and ran a successful creative business, exhibiting his work in London, Milan and Paris.
A college spokesperson said: “When Richard joined the college in 2003, the future of HCA was uncertain. In August he will leave a financially secure College that has developed immensely, thanks to the major achievements of staff and students under Richard’s leadership.”
Mr Heatly said: “HCA is now the major university-level provider in the county, and its future will be as an arts university.
“It will complement the technology focus of the new university — which of course we also support.
“The college is the kind of place that hardly exists elsewhere, so we should all value it and be proud of it. Herefordshire is a really creative place, and this college is the foundation and centre of that creativity.”
He added: “I plan to pursue my interest in the arts as a practitioner again and by being involved with organisations.
“I hope to keep in touch with the College as of course I will remain a great supporter of HCA.”
