A challenge to any business

At Milton Keynes College Group, we’re all about partnerships – with employers, with schools, with universities, the local authority, with community groups.

I am laying down a challenge to you as you read this. Talk to us. Come to see us. I guarantee there will be something to benefit you and your business.

A lot of craftsmen and tradespeople have an idea of what Further Education (FE) colleges are like and what we do based on memories of their own training. Take them into one of our workshops and the sights and smells come flooding back, however advanced they might be in their career. From self-employed carpenters to senior Formula One motor engineers, the response is the same and it is wreathed in nostalgia. People with no personal or family connection can be moved in a different way. For example, visitors to our South Central Institute of Technology in Bletchley, where we train the next generation of cloud and cybersecurity experts, feel like they’ve stepped into a top-level university or tech company. The same is true for our hospitality kitchens, our hairdressing salon, our construction yard and all the other amazing facilities we have. The one constant is people saying ‘I didn’t even know this was here’.

And that’s my point.

I speak to businesses every day with staff they wish had broader skills or ones which struggle to recruit. When I tell them that we can help, they’re generally surprised or even amazed. Th e thing is, it’s our job to understand our local area. To get the most out of the economy for everyone who lives and works in Milton Keynes, all the various parts have to be communicating and collaborating. We are responsible for the biggest percentage of future talent in the city, and provide more opportunities than anyone else for improving the skills of people already in the workplace. We just need to know what it is you need, and we can help you get it. But only if you come to talk to us.

Some people think (if they’ve ever thought about us at all) that college is exclusively a place for young people who struggled at school, or for adults studying conversational French or basket-weaving. Nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve met some of the smartest and most talented people of my life here at college. People with the abilities to found or transform businesses of all kinds.

Not everyone learns the same way. Th at’s why we have academic courses like A Levels, but we also specialise in hands-on vocational training. We produce top chefs because we have fabulous kitchens, because our students get to work in real commercial catering set-ups like the Silverstone racing circuit. We produce quality engineers because of the up-to-date equipment we have for them to learn on and staff with up-to-date professional experience. And it’s not just about being set work to do by their teachers.

Our partners help with that too.

Businesses provide real-world problems to be solved or projects to be undertaken and are often blown away by the ingenuity and effectiveness of the results.

And then they get drawn in.

I’ve talked a lot here about partnerships, and partnerships work both ways. We have professionals coming and giving guest lectures or demonstrating particular skills. We have companies dropping off pallets of bricks for construction, engines for motor vehicle, products for hairdressing. We have partners who help shape the curriculum, ensuring that the skills we teach are exactly the ones they themselves need in their business. We have people who offer work placements or mentorship. Meeting and speaking to our students is a great way to help, but it also provides an opportunity to talent spot, and is significantly cheaper and less time consuming than going through round after round of failed recruitment, never quite finding the right person for the job.

Whatever we do here is about the personal development of our students, and about Delivering Skills and Boosting Business (the name of a campaign we’re working on with four other colleges to encourage businesses to work with us – search for Delivering Skills on LinkedIn to find out more). Our work in attempting to close some of the local skills gaps was praised in our recent OFSTED report, which said: ‘Senior leaders work very effectively in partnership with numerous stakeholders to identify, understand and contribute to meeting skills needs in the city, region and nationally’.

Please note the words ‘work very effectively in partnership’. That’s the crucial bit. We can’t do our job if you don’t talk to us, whether you work for a multi-national or entirely on your own.

And like I said: if you come to see us and tell me you’ve wasted your time, you’ll be the first. I’m telling you now. It’s not going to happen.

Find out more about Milton Keynes College Group here.