New career colleges to open
01 September 2015
Six FE colleges are preparing to open ten new Career Colleges over the next two academic years, with the potential of another 15 to open by 2019.
Former Conservative Education Secretary Lord Baker first announced plans in October 2013 to create a series of Career Colleges, focussing on training for students aged from 14 years old with each college specialising in a different sector and working directly with employers, at existing FE colleges. Five of these are to open this month:
- Barking and Dagenham College’s Career College will specialise in digital and creative industries
- South Tyneside College’s will offer advanced manufacturing, engineering and computer science
- Yeovil College’s will cover health and care
- Harrow College will open two Career Colleges from the start of 2015-16 - one specialising in creative and digital industries, and the other in professional and business services.
These will join two Career Colleges that opened last September at London’s Bromley College and Liverpool’s Hugh Baird College, which specialise in catering and hospitality respectively.
Career Colleges take advantage of the Government’s decision to allow FE colleges to recruit at 14. They aim to increase the range and choice of opportunities open to 14-19 year olds and provide accelerated vocationally-focused programmes of study alongside core academic work.