A commitment to creating lifelong learning opportunities
Date published:
Amid a changing employment landscape caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and Brexit, Jo Phillips, director of adult education at Newcastle College, says the education provider is delivering support for learners across the age spectrum.
Opportunities for adults to return to education and training have always been an integral part of what we offer at Newcastle College.
We strongly believe opportunities to retrain and reskill should be available to everyone throughout their lives, but the events of the past few years (Brexit and COVID-19 are just two of those) have really highlighted the importance of lifelong learning.
The impact on the national economy and a rising unemployment rate have led to a number of government initiatives to improve opportunities for adults to retrain and upskill, including the reintroduction of the Lifetime Skills Guarantee funding that offers adults aged 24 and over the opportunity to study their first level three course for free.
This is absolutely a period of unprecedented change and the North East in particular has been badly hit by the pandemic.
But the truth is that we were already an area of economic deprivation and even before the first lockdown, our region suffered from a disproportionately high unemployment rate and a shortage of high-level, technical and specialist skills in the workforce.
We’ve seen that first-hand at Newcastle College, with 41 per cent of our adult students claiming Job Seekers Allowance or Universal Credit. There has been a lot of work done over the past few years to tackle this by both the North East Local Enterprise Partnership (NELEP) and the North of Tyne Combined Authority (NTCA).
That work is really changing the local economic landscape in terms of skills requirements, employment opportunities and prioritising areas for investment and growth, particularly NELEP’s four areas of strategic importance: digital, advanced manufacturing, health and life sciences and energy.
As a training provider, it has always been important for us to be aligned to those opportunities to ensure we are offering skills employers in our region need and providing a real chance of success for our learners.
That approach is the same across the college, from our further education for school leavers to our postgraduate courses, and right now 35 per cent of our adult enrolments are in sectors broadly related to those priority areas.
Traditionally, the courses we offer adults have been intended to enable them to lead fulfilling lives in their communities and promote social cohesion and social diversity in the region’s workplaces, and they’ve really been aimed at adults wanting to retrain or upskill and those looking to develop the knowledge, skills and behaviours that will improve their employment prospects.
In recent years, this has grown to include and support non-English speaking adults to gain language skills, improve their confidence and develop their understanding of British culture to enable better employment opportunities.
English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) forms the core of our current adult curriculum offer, accounting for 42 percent of adult enrolments at Newcastle College in 2020/21. These priorities haven’t changed – providing access to upskill and retrain enables social mobility, something that is hugely important for our area and the region as a whole.
In January, the Government’s ‘Skills for Jobs: Lifelong Learning for Opportunity and Growth 2021’ White Paper was released, putting further education colleges at the heart of the skills system and economic recovery, ensuring we will continue to have a pivotal role to play in providing learners of all ages with the skills needed to rebuild our local and national economy.
Legislation announced includes the introduction of ‘Local Skills Improvement Plans’, ensuring that further education providers are led by employers and local needs when creating their provision, something that Newcastle College is already well placed to support through its work with both NELEP and NTCA, as well as our wide-ranging employer partnerships, such as our important work with Newcastle United Foundation and Port of Blyth.
Our work with NTCA, in particular, has been to better align our adult skills offer to its Strategic Skills Plan, the needs of the changing local economy and job vacancy-led skills programmes. By working together, we’re really
hoping to reduce the number of local adults of working age without qualifications, lower the number of adults aged between 19 and 24 who aren’t currently in education or training and also to help improve the English, maths and digital skills of local adults.
Again, all of this is to ensure we meet the needs of employers across the region, improving employment opportunities for adults. In June, we joined with NTCA to celebrate and promote Adult Learner Week, which ran from June 14-18. This marked an opportunity for us to really celebrate the importance of lifelong learning and the positive impact it can have in changing lives, and to promote some of the opportunities available that people might not be aware of.
We understand there are always barriers to accessing education, from affordability to balancing family life. It’s our job to remove those barriers and Adult Learner Week is all about educating as many people as possible
about how we can do that – it’s never too late to learn something new.
We’re also really responsive to changing needs, both locally and nationally. Over the past year, our initial plans to
align our adult curriculum evolved and adapted as a result of the pandemic. We introduced a wide range of free, online-based, community-funded courses to support those at risk of redundancy and furlough, and we increased Sector Work Academy Programmes (SWAP), specifically in the health sector to support an immediate skills shortage
requirement to deliver COVID-19 testing.
Most recently, Newcastle College has launched its Strategy To 2030, the first time we have developed a long-term plan to support our position within the North East. It sets out our vision to develop the skills and talents of all students to succeed in modern enterprise and make a positive contribution to the prosperity of our region.
By doing so, we will develop talent for the region and enable NCG, the national group of colleges we are part of, to become the UK’s leading college group. It’s something that is giving a clear direction for everyone at the college who
works to support learners and employer partners, and really demonstrates the importance of the work we do outside our core work of delivering education.
It is the partnerships with local authorities, with schools and with employers that really help us prepare our learners of every age for the future and make a real impact on our region. In an ever-changing economy and globally connected world, it is hard to predict what might impact the North East in the coming months and years, but Newcastle College will remain at the heart of our local community and I am confident that whatever happens, our role will remain to respond, adapt and support learners to develop the skills they need to succeed, whatever their age.