Claire Arbery, director at West of England Institute of Technology, says it’s been a challenging year, and what a time to launch a new Employer led programme focussing on the education space between the A level and Degree qualifications known as Technical Education.
What’s it all about?
Technical Education was a mainstay of education in the 70’s and 80’s with Polytechnics supporting adults to progress into high skilled, high paid roles but in more recent times there has been a real decline in the number of workers with these skills.
Currently only 10% of the working population has a Level 4 or level 5 qualification as their highest level of qualification, which means that the ‘UK plc’ performs poorly when compared to our EU counterparts for this sector of the workforce, and too many workers have skills at Level 1 and 2 with little progression to higher skilled roles.
But it’s not all doom and gloom, the Government recognised – long before the lockdown - that higher skills were needed to make the workforce more adaptable and more productive, they have already made investments into T levels and Apprenticeships and now £290m to create a network of Institutes across England. The West of England Institute of Technology (WEIoT) is focused on ensuring that there is a digital aspect to all our developments to enable learners to be future ready.
Here at the WEIoT, we have focused in the areas of Advanced Manufacturing and High Value Engineering, Health and Life Sciences and Digital and Creative, all areas that have massive growth potential for skills development. The WEIoT is guided by key employers that advise the educational partners on the skills you need to develop your business to adapt and grow for the future.
Case Study
The WEIoT is working with Westfield and AECOM to look at the implementation of autonomous vehicles, known as pods, in several diverse locations across the West of England. This emerging technology is already developing the need for skilled personnel to be able to plan safe routes for these vehicles and for staff to be able to programme the software to recognise objects on the path, and GPS barriers to keep the vehicle on track. These skills will be needed as the green technology and transport agenda grows. We are actively working together to promote the future careers to current students and parents to increase awareness of the diversity of the job roles of the future.
We hope to share more on the ‘Possibility of the Pods’ in the New Year.
What’s in it for you?
Over the next few months we will be publishing a series of blogs on the development of the WEIoT for you to keep up to date with progress and see how we can support your existing or future workforce; but if you would like to upskill your team now in this exciting area of development, please let me know and we will work with you to develop a bespoke offer for support, whether to update your workforce skills in Digital, Engineering or Health or to seek your guidance for input into the future training we need to offer, to help you to maintain your business as cutting edge.
We are looking forward to our journey to support employers across the West of England and look forward to working in partnership with you.
If you would like to find out how the Institute of Technology can support you, please pop me an email or give me a call