News

A consortium of Further Education colleges in the West Midlands has secured £710,000 of new funding from the Department for Education to support people at work who find it difficult to access traditional college courses. Dudley College of Technology, on behalf of The West Midlands Further Education Group, submitted a successful bid which aims to provide a new and integrated package of online, flexible and blended learning support for people in the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) region.

This year's National Careers Week is March 5th – 10th and aims to help the future generation to understand the links between courses, skills and the pathways they open up. The focus here at Dudley College of Technology is firmly on helping learners to understand where their learning can take them.

Chief Executive Officer, Dudley College of Technology and Chair of the Board of Dudley Academies Trust, Lowell Williams has won the prestigious “FE Leader of the Year” award at the annual TES Awards ceremony, held in London on Friday night (23^rd February 2018). In a ceremony hosted by the TV celebrity Alan Davies, Mr Williams was recognised by more than 800 representatives of the FE sector. Judges’ noted his inspirational leadership has seen the fortunes of the college turn-around during the 10 years under his stewardship.

Students from Dudley College’s Construction Apprenticeship Training Centre (CAT) have helped raise over £20,000 for patient care at Mary Steven’s Hospice by supporting the hospice to stage a charity performance of “The Wizard of Oz” pantomime. With only a week to go before the curtain was raised; Construction Tutors Martin Stain and Paul Jones were approached by the charity with an urgent request to help them stage the show by building some crucial props.

Dudley College’s Chief Executive Officer Lowell Williams has been named as one of only 7 appointments to the government’s new advisory group which has been established to improve the quality of further education. The group which will be known as the National Leaders of Further Education (NLFE), is made up of some of the best principals in the country from colleges who have been rated good or outstanding by Ofsted, the sector regulator. The NLFE has been created in order to bring the quality of all of the 300 FE colleges across the country up to the standards of the very best, as part of a raft of initiatives the government is taking forward to strengthen the role and remit of the FE Commissioner.

Friday 1st December saw yet another cohort of Dudley graduates receive their Higher Education Awards, in the company of their friends and family at our annual graduation event. With learners from 24 different programme areas ranging from HNC Electrical Engineering to HND Travel and Tourism – the evening showcased the breadth of our higher education provision and was testimony to the real difference we make to the lives of our learners.

Children from the Ileys Community centre in Smethwick took part last week in an innovative project to teach them about the history of the Black Country and show them how traditional skills such as forging and chain making are being updated by new technology.  The project which is a collaboration between the Black Country Living Museum and Dudley College of Technology is intended to give the children an appreciation of the industrial past whilst introducing them to future career options.

Earlier this month (November) the college played host to two important groups of visitors. The first were delegates from Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh and Ghana who were part of a British Council initiative and the second a group from the Indian Skills Ministry supported by the Association of Colleges (AoC).

The newly formed Dudley Academies Trust (DAT), which is under the sponsorship of Dudley College of Technology, has made another key appointment with the engagement of Jo Bull, to the role of Headteacher: High Arcal School. Jo, who is currently Interim Headteacher, will take up the post with immediate effect.

Motor vehicle students at Dudley College of Technology have taken the exciting delivery of their very first Westfield sports kit car as part of a new initiative to drive up their skills base. The Westfield FW Special Edition Kit model, costing just over £20,000 will be used to teach the fundamentals of motor vehicle design and construction to Level 3 Motor Vehicle students at the college’s Wolverhampton Street campus.