A new cohort of colleges and independent training providers has been selected to join the skills revolution by becoming part of WorldSkills UK’s Centre of Excellence.
The Centre of Excellence, partnered and funded by educational charity and awarding body NCFE, will see more than 40,000 young students and apprentices, from all socio-economic groups across the UK, armed with world-class skills.
The Centre of Excellence aims to supercharge the quality and delivery of technical and vocational training by transferring world-class expertise and knowledge to help develop educators and learners.
In its recent Skills for Jobs White Paper for England, the government cited the WorldSkills Centre of Excellence as a prime example of how it wanted organisations with the relevant expertise, to provide high-quality training and development opportunities for teaching staff.
The 12 institutions entering this year join the first wave of 20 colleges selected last September, when the three-year pilot project was launched. Educators at the colleges and training providers will receive exclusive train-the-trainer sessions and 60 hours of intensive continuing professional development.
The establishments joining the scheme this year are:
- Blackpool and the Fylde College
- City of Glasgow College
- Coleg Cambria
- Firebrand Training
- Gower College
- JTL
- New College Durham
- Northern Ireland Consortium (Belfast Metropolitan College; Northern Regional College; Southern Regional College; South Eastern Regional College; North West Regional College; South West College
- Oldham College
- Solihull College and University Centre
- Waltham Forest College
- Weston College.
As well as the Centre of Excellence, dozens of other colleges and training providers will receive unique insights and expertise from WorldSkills UK through our Innovation Network, designed to share best practice and mainstream excellence.
In order to deliver the world-class skills that employers demand, to be internationally competitive, we need to invest in the educators that are training young people for the future. The Centre of Excellence is going through the gears. The initiative has proved to be hugely oversubscribed and we are working tirelessly to help as many young women and men as possible.
It’s a radical new way of bringing global best practice to local economies. Mainstreaming excellence in training standards and delivering it directly to tens of thousands of young students and apprentices at their places of learning is key to levelling up the economy and attracting inward investment.
