Students in the South East presented with fantastic opportunity to benefit from new Institute of Technology.
A new training initiative that combines the expertise of educational partners and industry leaders is coming to the South East.
The area has been selected to create an Institute of Technology (IoT) to deliver higher technical qualifications in areas such as Engineering and Manufacturing, Transport and Logistics, Health Science, Construction and the Built Environment, Horticulture (including viticulture), Animal Science, and Information and Communication Technology.
IoTs are unique collaborations between existing further education colleges, universities, and leading employers.
They were developed as a response to needs identified in the Sainsbury report to develop and promote higher level technical skills, which are required by industry but are in short supply. They have been underpinned by £290 million of government investment to fund industry-standard facilities and equipment. IoTs represent an exciting new model for skills delivery.
Because training delivered by IoTs has been designed with industry partners at the forefront, they are able to focus on giving people the technical skills that businesses need, which helps them to prosper and leads to more and better local jobs.
Rather than create brand new centres, IoTs are delivered by investing in partner’s existing sites to create new cutting-edge facilities with state-of-the-art equipment and benefitting from local industry expertise.
Since being successful in its bid, South East IoT partners have been busy investing £13m into creating a fully digitised ‘mini’ factory and working environments, replicating, for example, automated warehousing, building management systems, automated manufacturing such as PLC and robotics, as well as technologically advanced environments for health & care, construction technical environments, and advanced veterinary labs.
The South East Institute of Technology (SEIoT) project is led by South Essex College with core partners University of East Anglia, Anglia Ruskin University, Canterbury Christchurch University, Harlow College, MidKent College, East Sussex College Group, Chelmsford College and Plumpton College.
Employer partners include DP World (London Gateway), Port of Tilbury, Stansted Airport, Morgan Sindall Construction, Princess Alexandra Hospital Group, Leonardo, Megger Instruments, Chartway Group and Wine GB.