Last week marked another successful Colleges Week, it is always fantastic to see the celebration of what colleges bring to our education system, to our local communities and how they enrich people from every walk of life and every background.
What’s clear, and not just from the celebrations last week, is that colleges are at the heart of communities. They are there for people when they ‘fancy doing something different’ or ‘want to explore something new’, they are there ‘when I didn’t get the grades at school to start my vocational training’ and they are there for people ‘who don’t want to go to a traditional university’ but want to pursue higher qualifications. Crucially, they are embedded in communities, they are a familiar face, a safe surrounding and a trusted figure in local life.
They are also a critical engine for economic growth in the local area and have the potential not just to transform the lives of individuals but entire communities by enhancing skill levels. At The Open University (OU), we are passionate about ensuring that higher education is open to all, it is at the root of our social mission. Look at our website or speak to our alumni and you will see and hear countless stories of people who left school with no qualifications, but who with our teaching and support and their own grit, determination and talent achieve undergraduate level, master’s level and even Doctorate level qualifications. Nowhere is the transformative power of education more powerfully witnessed than in the nation’s colleges and at the OU.
We already have many productive partnerships with colleges across the four nations of the UK and the Republic of Ireland that the OU operates in but I’m delighted thanks to the support of the UK Government and the Office for Students that we can further enhance our work with colleges in England.
In May, the UK Government announced £10million of funding for the OU to partner with further education providers to provide high-quality higher and technical education across England. Under the scheme, we will be working colleges that do not currently offer higher education and training or want to expand the courses they offer. The aim of the scheme is to support colleges to put on a wider range of technical courses, supporting more people to secure jobs with higher wages and grow the economy in their area.
Announcing the scheme in May, the then Minister for Higher and Further Education Rt Hon Michelle Donelan MP said:
“For too long, people have had to look beyond their hometown for higher education courses…This marks a new era for higher education, supporting more people to gain the skills needed to get good jobs, with higher wages that will help to grow the economy and tackle the cost of living.”
The ambition of the scheme is lofty and rightly so. Using the OU’s experience and knowledge of distance-learning and open-access, combining it with the educational role that colleges play in their local communities to deliver advanced technical skills to boost the local economy in higher educational cold spots in England.
Over the summer, we have been very encouraged by the responses we have received from colleges all over England to the launch of the programme and are looking forward to announcing with the Department for Education and the Office for Students, the first wave of colleges we will be partnering with shortly. If you’d like to know more about the scheme and are interested in applying for your college, you can find out more at https://www.open.ac.uk/business/he-with-fe . A second wave of applications is now being accepted, the deadline for which is 15th November 2022.
At the OU, we are delighted to be playing our part in supporting colleges expand their higher education offering and deliver even more for their local communities. We are proud once again to have supported Colleges Week and the celebration of all that colleges do to enrich the lives of individuals and local communities.
Paul Beeby,
Director, Open University Validation Partnerships
