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Partner a College aims to increase collaboration between home builders and colleges to improve outcomes for further education students. Funded by CITB, the programme will support home builders to establish strong partnership with further education providers to support evolving the training offer. By aligning vocational education with workforce needs, the initiative aims to ensure that colleges equip students with work-ready skills home builders and contractors need in order for them to enter the workforce.
Partner a College is a two-year pilot programme bringing together colleges and employers to co-design a framework of activities as well as a digital toolkit. The long-term goal is for these resources to support more home builders and colleges in forming successful partnerships.
The framework will draw directly from employer experience and learning and will be designed to meet the needs of all sizes of home builders and be inclusive of the supply chain and those wider trade associated contractors.
This programme aims to improve the employment readiness of students, ultimately improving and speeding up the transition from further education courses into construction roles.
This will be achieved by industry and colleges working together to shape training that is fit for purpose and deliver support so that colleges have the knowledge and resources they need to equip students with work-ready skills.
Our ultimate goal is to deliver resources that demystify the process, provide inspiration, and offer clear guidance to help employers and colleges move from initial engagement to sustained collaboration.
As it stands, just 40% of those enrolled in a construction-based qualification go on to enter the building and construction industry. As industry is facing a long-standing skills shortage, it’s vital that we fix the leaky pipeline and support more work ready young people into the industry.
Office for National Statistics figures show that there are over 35,000 job vacancies, and employers report that over half of vacancies can’t be filled due to a lack of required skills. Demand is expected to increase further in order to deliver the government's target of 1.5 million homes
A historical shortage of FE tutors and assessors and a lack of workshop facilities are further compounding the problem and preventing learning providers from increasing and improving provision.
Our framework and toolkit will be based on learnings from a two-year pilot programme. During this pilot we will work with a number of home builders and colleges across England and Wales. Together are building strong partnerships and developing action plans which lead to meaningful and sustained engagement.
Participating home builders will be going that extra mile to deliver and scale up activities such as work experience, site visits, and tutor CPD
Participating colleges include:
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