‘Love and loss’ film wins award

The tale of a boy who jumps in and out of a newspaper before dying helped three media students win best animation at the Staffordshire Film Festival.

Solihull College 18-year-olds Laura-Jane Gregory, Rhiannon Lloyd and Jessie Doyle developed the idea from the opening credits of Russell Howard’s Good News television programme.

Their two-minute film, One More Day (with you), took four months to complete.

Laura-Jane said it aimed to highlight the importance and value of spending time with siblings. “We really wanted to connect with the audience and decided that featuring a child was the way to do this,” she said.

“The decision to end the story with the boy dying was brave, but we wanted to highlight love and loss.”

The girls are currently completing extended diplomas in creative media production in media (TV and Film) at the college.

Featured image caption: Rhiannon Lloyd, Laura-Jane Gregory and Jessie Doyle

Diners get their fill of India

Cheshire foodies got more than a culinary taste of India when hospitality and catering students teamed up with travel and tourism events management learners.

A spicy four-course meal was backed up with holiday destination promotions during an Indian-themed night at South Cheshire College’s Restaurant on the Crescent.

Chefs from Bombay Restaurant in Crewe oversaw hospitality and catering students as they sent dishes, including onion bhajis and chicken tikka balti, out to more than 35 guests.

Bombay chef Raz Hoque said: “This was something completely different for us. We look forward to working with the college again in the future.”

Chef lecturer Shane Guildford said: “It was great for our students to work with chefs from one of the best Indian restaurants in the area. It gave them the chance to serve different food dishes under expert guidance.”

Featured image caption: South Cheshire College travel and tourism students Emma Fiddes Jamie Reilly, both 19, and Lauren Blainey, 18, promoting India as a holiday destination

Balls backs book on stammering

Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls dropped in on London adult college City Lit to launch a new book on stammering therapy.

Mr Balls, who has a stammer, had been interviewed by City Lit speech and language therapist Jan Logan for a chapter in Stammering Therapy from the Inside – New Perspectives on Working with Young People and Adults.

Mr Balls said: “I hope this book full of personal stories will help to raise awareness and understanding of some of the challenges stammerers face every day.

“With the right help and support, we know that children and adults can deal with their stammer and do well in whatever walk of life they choose.”

The book was edited by City Lit speech and language therapy tutors Carolyn Cheasman and Rachel Everard, and independent therapist Sam Simpson.

Featured image caption: Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls with City Lit speech and language therapist Jan Logan

Aiming high in Nottingham’s centre

A football pitch on the roof and science labs that will focus on low carbon technology are just two of the features of Central College Nottingham’s proposed £70m city centre base.

The building is planned for the Broadmarsh East area of the city and is expected to take up to five years to complete.

The relevant authorities are currently discussing funding, planning and logistics.

The planned six-storey centre, which has the capacity for 4,000 students, will focus on science, technology, engineering and maths, and will include labs looking at low carbon technology and an all-weather pitch on the roof.

Principal Malcolm Cowgill said: “The new build is part of our long-term ambition to improve education and progression to employment in Nottingham.

“This links to the college’s new name, Central [formerly South Nottingham College], revolving around a ‘hub and spoke’ strategy; a central hub — the flagship Nottingham City base — with a number of spoke centres of learning around Nottinghamshire.”

Featured image caption: Central College Nottingham principal Malcolm Cowgill (left) and vice principal David Drury looking over plans for the college’s £70m new build

Branching out in business

Two Warwickshire College students are proving that they can cut it in the world of business after opening their own tree surgery company.

Andrew Plester and Graham Bird launched P and B Tree Services last month with advice and support from the college’s enterprise board.

And they’ve already turned 75 per cent of their quotes into contracts.

The students met in 2011 when they started a level three extended diploma in forestry and arboriculture.

Andrew, 29, said: “I always had ambitions to set up my own business but didn’t realise how much support we’d receive from the college.”

Graham, 19, said: “Not only has the college enabled us to gain our qualifications to become professional tree surgeons, it’s given us the opportunity to develop the skills and knowledge needed to run our own enterprise.

“We’re really excited about running P and B Tree Services full-time after we finish college this summer.”

Featured image caption: Tree’s a crowd: Andrew Plester and Graham Bird

‘Qualifications don’t produce good teachers’

The new teaching and training qualifications for the FE sector dominated  discussion at the latest Westminster Education Forum last Thursday. Shane Mann reports 

Changes in sector regulations were outlined in the Learning and Skills Improvement Service (LSIS) report last month entitled Teaching and Training Qualifications for the Further Education and Skills Sector in England.

It also introduced new teaching qualifications that awarding organisations and higher education institutions are devising for introduction in September.

Discussion of these changes and what they mean for teaching standards were examined by an FE sector panel made up of Martin Doel, chief executive of the Association of Colleges, Rob Wye, LSIS chief executive, Norman Crowther, the Association of Teachers and Lecturers’ national official for post-16 education, Ian Pryce, principal and chief executive, Bedford College and Sue Crowley, chair, non-executive board, Institute for Learning (IfL).

Mr Wye started the session by discussing the changes.

“It is clear from our research that excellent teaching and learning is dependent on excellent teacher training and excellent additional CPD,” he said.

“One of the findings in the Lingfield review was that the structure of qualifications for teachers and trainers was too complex; that it needed revisiting and reformulating. LSIS has undertaken this work in recent months and has found that what employers actually wanted was a simple structure that meets their needs. That is what has been developed.”

Mr Doel commended LSIS for its work, saying: “Teaching standards and qualifications are not an end in themselves.

Martin Doel, chief executive of the AoC

“I think they’re actually a very useful thing, but I do believe that they don’t need to be mandatory. I am certain that the guild will take LSIS’s work forward on that basis. The flexibility of the qualifications produced is useful as a benchmark to aim for, and for employers.”

He added that teaching qualifications “do not produce nor guarantee good teaching and student outcomes”.

“Good teaching is necessary but not a sufficient condition for guaranteed good student outcomes,” he said.

“It’s a pre-eminent part of what colleges and providers could and should provide in terms of good student outcomes.

“There is a difference between occupational and professional expertise as a teacher. There are complex support systems within colleges — learner tracking, engagement of industry and knowledge management — which are all important and critical to student outcomes.”

I want my students to be taught by the most skilled people that I can find”

Ms Crowley said that practitioners wanted teaching qualifications to remain mandatory.

“We consulted widely with our membership and they were clear that they want an entitlement to teacher qualifications and they would be happy that regulations were maintained,” she said.

“It’s important that we think about whether you need to be qualified. How will those that come in to the profession feel when working alongside those that have qualifications? Will they have a second-class status? I don’t know of another profession where regulations for qualifications have been revoked. It’s quite remarkable.”

However, Mr Pryce argued that the sector should focus more on the vocational skill of the individual; whether a candidate could teach or not should be up to individual organisations, not the government.

“I want my students to be taught by the most skilled people I can find, I don’t want the government to be involved at all because the quality of my staff is a matter for my organisation and it’s a source of competitive advantage,” he said.

“The idea that the government tells me I can employ people that have certain qualifications actually offends me. The government should look at our outputs not our inputs.

Rob Wye, LSIS chief executive and Ian Pryce, principal and chief executive, Bedford College

“I also don’t understand why the taxpayer should be expected to fund professional qualifications for teachers. And why we allow awarding bodies that are not professional teaching bodies to create them. We need to be attractive to those highly skilled bricklayers and engineers and have to be able to convert people from industry into teaching without them losing time or money. That dual professionalism is the jewel in our crown.

“In our sector we have a compliance model of continuing professional development, whereas the Quality Assurance Agency talks about scholarly activity and people doing research. It’s a continuum and we’re on the wrong end. We’re fixated at the CPD end, we’ve got to shift that focus and stop counting hours.”

Featured image caption: Sue Crowley, chair, non-executive board, Institute for Learning

Magnum head shares his skills

More than 100 photography, art and media students at Dudley College had a rare treat when documentary and art photographer Martin Parr, UK head of the Magnum Photo Agency, talked about his experiences and work over the past 30 years.

He described how photaography had changed since the 1970s and how his career had been driven by passion.

“By being obsessive, you strive to be better than anyone else; you look for more interesting subjects and take more pictures. You might need to take a lot of bad pictures to get a really good one,” he told students.

Ben Gamble, Dudley College manager for art, design and media, said: “It was a privilege to have Martin share his work and experiences with our students.

“This is one of the many ways we give our learners a competitive edge and exposure to the realities of working in a creative industry.”

Featured image caption: Dudley College photography students with Martin Parr. From left: Ruth Gadd, Gina Ho, Charlotte Coddling, all 18, Laura Kennet and Lizzie Dunn, both 17

Minister visits new £33m campus

It was a day of firsts when the leader of the Welsh government visited a new £33m campus. First Minister Carwyn Jones met the first learners to study at Coleg Gwent’s state-of-the-art Blaenau Gwent Learning Zone.

As well as construction, the campus, which opened in March, offers courses in art, media, IT and independent living skills.

Mr Jones said: “The investment in this new facility aims to improve learners’ experiences and choices, as well as provide greater access, increased participation and improved standards. Many of these aims are already being achieved just months after it opened its doors.

“We want places of learning in Wales to inspire learners of all abilities. It is clear from the enthusiasm of the students and the wider community that this new Learning Zone is doing just that.”

Featured image caption: First Minister of Wales Carwyn Jones, Coleg Gwent deputy principal Guy Lacey and plumbing student Tori Lee, 18, at the new campus

LEPs can articulate the needs of business

The 39 local enterprise partnerships really do want to raise skill and employability levels as a fundamental to driving local growth, says David Frost

Perhaps one of the most dispiriting aspects of working with local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) is that skills and employability feature at the top of all of their agendas. But if the 39 LEPs are to have responsibility for driving growth, they will be hampered if they do not raise skill levels, particularly employability skills, in their areas.

Why is this dispiriting? Because we have spent billions trying to resolve it. We had a huge focus in the decade to 2007, but much went on before this. A litany of agencies and acronyms: the training boards, the MSC; The TECs; the LSC — and all the others in between.

All were supposedly set up to resolve the endless mismatch between the skills that employers needed and what was being provided locally, and a real concern that many young people were leaving education deeply unprepared for the world of work.

We seem to have made little progress on this central issue.

LEPs, after a slow start, are now very much the focus of the drive to promote growth. Lord Heseltine’s report, No stone unturned, gave real stimulus to the LEP network.

This was further built on by the Autumn statement in December and the Budget in the spring of this year. LEPs are the only game in town at present in respect of economic development.

What is clear is that the business and civic leaders understand the scale of the skills issue; they know that it is too late to sort these problems when a young person is 18.

There is a need to work in schools, just as there is a need for flexible and high quality work experience. There is a need for impartial and quality careers advice, which will be delivered in an increasingly non-traditional way. And there is a need to market the benefits of increasingly high quality apprenticeships.

FE will have to show the added value it is giving to young people in return for the substantial levels of funding that providers continue to receive”

Too many young school-leavers go on to higher education, which is not providing them with the opportunities that they were led to believe would result from choosing this route.

That is why employers have become such strong advocates for the University Technical Colleges and, increasingly, the studio schools that are sprouting up across the country.

FE has a vital role to play in an era of greater focus on vocational education. Equally, FE will have to show the added value it is giving to young people in return for the substantial levels of funding that providers continue to receive. LEPs will have a deep interest in whether course provision is geared to the needs of employers and whether there is a real understanding by management within colleges, of local business and employer skill needs over the coming years.

This will have to be more than LEPs having a seat on a college governing body and more than an FE principal being on the LEP board.

We are at a crossroads. We have a real opportunity to make a once in a lifetime change.  LEPs can articulate the needs of business in respect of skills. They can then influence local provision – and they should be able to do this through financial levers and the single pot.

But they must be deeply engaged with business themselves, all business. They have to encourage companies to train and they have to lead and co-ordinate provision.

I know that the 39 LEPs are up for this challenge and really do want to raise skill and employability levels as a fundamental to driving local growth. We move at increasing pace towards a very interesting future.

David Frost, chair of the Local Enterprise Partnership Network