Building Telford's engineering workforce for the future
How a new £5.6m centre aims to prepare young people for Telford's engineering jobs of tomorrow
Lawrence Wood, Principal and CEO of Telford College, looks at the borough's engineering heritage and the skills needed for its future.
There are 19,000 engineering jobs in Telford and Wrekin.
Across automotive, aerospace, defence and precision engineering, this borough has built a reputation as one of the country’s most significant advanced manufacturing locations. The employers driving that are right on our doorstep.
A number of those companies gave us their backing to help secure a successful funding bid to develop a £5.6m Advanced Technology Centre at our Wellington campus, creating an additional 205 study places for 16 to 19-year-olds.
They will help shape what the centre needs to deliver and they’ll be supporting the students who come through it – just as the likes of Denso and RBSL do now through the partnership work we do with employers.
That means T Levels and Level 2 and 3 technical programmes with genuine progression routes into Higher Technical Qualifications.
It means pathways into software development, cyber security, data analytics and low-carbon technologies.
And it means young people in Telford being trained, right here, for the jobs that Telford’s employers are actively trying to fill.
Engineering is part of this town’s identity and its heritage. But the skills employers need today look very different from a generation ago, when so many of our current students’ parents came through our doors. The infrastructure to develop those skills has to keep pace.
That’s why we’re investing not just in a campus, but in this borough. The college’s job is to make sure young people here can access that future, not watch it happen around them.
When I talk to young people who are thinking about their next steps, I want them to see Telford as a place where ambition is possible. And the new engineering centre is a concrete expression of our ambition too.