Deeside Award for Innovation in Supporting Students to Success

“

Deeside College is celebrating being named joint winners of the Fforwm: Supporting Students to Success award. The ceremony, organised by Fforwm, a body representing further education institutions in Wales, was held on 25th May 2005 at the Hilton Hotel in Cardiff.

The award recognised the innovative work done by Deeside College, who working in partnership with many businesses provides vocational training for workers. The college has been training people at their work-places and even providing support and tuition for shift-workers on a 24/7 basis in some cases.

The College has devised this innovative scheme in co-operation with many businesses based in Wales, such as Airbus and Headland Foods, and has built an excellent reputation for providing work-based training in engineering and many other disciplines.

Strong Principal and Strong Staff

The Principal of Deeside, David Jones was delighted with the award and was eager to praise the staff at the college.

“This award highlights the breadth of our work with employers across the board; from the food to care industries. In particular it gives recognition to the excellent staff and that is why we had key people such as Sue Champion, Course Assessor, attending the ceremony to accept the award. It is particularly welcomed as Wales has very highly-rated colleges, in relation to the UK as a whole, and we are the first college in North Wales to receive such an award.”

When asked about the college’s innovative work-based support system Principal Jones answered:

“I don”t know if we are unique with regard to the service we provide but I am not aware of any other college providing this kind of support. The current program was started by our staff getting to know the market and how each business operated, then we responded to what the employers needed. The partnership works very well as businesses can get on with what they do best, whilst we take care of their training needs.

“The system works well for the college and its staff. Deeside is the largest college in Wales in terms of income generated through business training but there is a lot of competition from schools, colleges and training companies; so it is important that we find out what our customers want and make sure we deliver it.”

Dan Atkinson.

Who gets your Award for Excellence? Good or bad, tell us in the FE Blog

“