Last updated 11:18, Friday, 09 May 2008

Cath Richardson, principal at Lakes College West Cumbria, on the range of activity at colleges

THERE is a perception that colleges are full of 16-year-olds learning to be bricklayers or hairdressers, and while that is a large proportion of what we do, of approximately 6,000 students only 1,000 of them are full-time and aged 16-18.

The remainder consists of part time students, of differing ages, from school leavers to pensioners, who all come from different walks of life, including those who learn for the love of it; those who see it as a way of improving their lives, striving to push themselves or their businesses further; the unemployed; those who are re-training; and students attending higher education courses.

Although our provision is very much driven by our local area, the needs of both employers and of local people, we are also driven by government agendas given to us from the Learning and Skills Council which passes funding on to further education colleges from government funds. Some of you may be familiar with the Train to Gain agenda currently is running TV adverts, which is having a big impact on what we offer and to whom, mainly because it can provide free training to those people who need it. Train to Gain offers free training to those people in work who do not have five GCSEs or equivalent. Some of you reading this may be very competent at your job, whatever it may be, but getting a qualification to back up your skills is a real boost to your employability, or your eligibility for promotion and is well worth thinking about – especially as it is free.

With all the various marketing campaigns around education and skills the issue is obviously very high on the political agenda, be it nationally, or locally. Recently, Cumbria Vision held an economic summit that had at the heart of it the need to educate and up-skill the inhabitants of Cumbria, in order to preserve the economic prosperity of the region and to see it begin to thrive once more.

One way West Cumbria as a community can help towards this vision is through training and education, and although people may imagine that in order to drive the economy we need rafts of graduates in highly-paid jobs, which is true in part, we also need to offer courses that help those who fell below the academic radar some time ago and who find it hard to come back and learn. We have a set of provision called Skills for Life, which can help you on the first step towards understanding maths, English and computers that can often have the best of us baffled. These courses are designed specifically not to intimidate learners, no matter what the aptitude, and once the basic fear of sitting back inside a learning environment has been conquered students can move on to other courses at a level right for them.

Whatever level a learner may be at, and in whatever business sector, it is our strategic mission to help them in whatever way we can, so why not come and see what we do and how we do it.