Our Mission

Developing skills, supporting businesses, engaging communities, changing lives.

Our Values

Our core Values which run throughout all our work are:

• Respect

• Inclusion

• Sustainability

• Equality

• Excellence

Students

3,109 16-19 full time students

459 Higher Education Students

262 T Level Students

1,179 apprentices

Our Context

We have a long and proud history of serving the local community of Leicester and Leicestershire. Leicester College is an exciting and diverse place to study and many students of all ages and backgrounds join us every year. We have the broadest range of courses and some of best technical and specialist training facilities in the east midlands.

We train apprentices, educate higher education students and those wanting to improve their English and maths as well as thousands of young people and adults who have chosen a technical or vocational career path. With around 20,000 students studying with us every year, we are the primary source of post-16 technical education and skills for the local working age population.

Our student population is around 50% non-white and over 100 nationalities are represented in the student body.

We value diversity and recognise that people bring different perspectives, ideas, knowledge and culture. This difference brings strength and energy to the College.

We are privileged to be serving a City with such a diverse population and with a thriving and growing entrepreneurial base. There are over 40,000 businesses in the wider Leicestershire area,
13,000 of which are based in Leicester, including a significant proportion of small and medium sized enterprises. There is also a strong public sector which includes some of the largest employers in the City.

Leicester has very specific education and training needs for both adults and young people and experiences pockets of serious economic as well as educational deprivation and inequality.
There are still high numbers of young people who perform poorly up to Key Stage 2 and achievement in Leicester remains below the national average.

This means that many young people come to further education, and specifically to Leicester College, with significant educational gaps. Nevertheless, many flourish in vocational and technical fields and go on to perform highly in a further education setting, progressing to further study or employment and making highly successful career paths.

Over a quarter of Leicester’s adult population have no qualifications. Leicester ranks lowest of its local authority peer comparators on this measure and has fewer adults with higher level qualifications at level 4 and above.

We continue to be the largest provider of adult provision in the City delivering over 40% of all adult courses.

As such, we have an important role in enabling adults to develop the skills they need to progress and develop both career and personal aspirations.

Opportunities

Leicester and Leicestershire Enterprise Partnership’s Local Skills Report identifies some of the main skills issues and needs locally, many of which the College is well placed to support.

There will be a need for high level technical skills, for example in STEM and digital and also
skills which are relatively new in sectors such as low carbon. There will also be a need to reskill existing workers to meet areas of demand, for example health and care roles or logistics.

The focus for skills to rebuild the local economy over the coming years will be on:

• Improving digital literacy

• Apprenticeships and training

• Inclusive skills and employment

• Skills transfer through innovation and collaboration

• Young people

• Pathways to future jobs.

The recent Local Skills Improvement Plan (LSIP) for Leicester and Leicestershire has also reviewed the knowledge, skills and behaviours required to meet employers’ growth aspirations, focussing initially on the manufacturing, logistics and sport and health sectors.

This identifies that there are some commonalities across the sectors when it comes to knowledge, skill and behaviours.

Technical and vocational knowledge areas are the most important to a business’s success followed by basic literacy, numeracy, IT and health and safety. Team working is the most important skill across all sectors, followed by verbal communication, specific occupational skills, written communication and time management. Having people with the right behaviours is considered critical for business success.

The recommendations of the LSIP which highlight the need for a curriculum offer that delivers what employers need and better communication of that offer present opportunities for us to work more collaboratively and strategically with partners and stakeholders to tailor and refine our offer.

While the skills needs of the large public employers are very different from those of some of the smaller companies, this shows that there remain some key similarities and opportunities for us to work closely with businesses of all sizes and sectors to identify and target training that meets the needs of the employer and the employee.

In meeting our Mission and Values, we have a responsibility and a commitment to help address these skills priorities; to prepare for the workplace of the future, reskilling and retraining existing staff, identifying and broadening talent pipelines, and maximising the potential across the local workforce.

The College also has a clear role to play in contributing to the Levelling Up agenda. In many ways, this has always been central the College’s Mission and we know that the education and skills that we deliver

to so many individuals and businesses make a significant contribution to social mobility as well as economic growth. Our challenge will be to ensure that we make best use of our resources and expertise to achieve the best impact for the local population and economy and that we communicate better with employers to show the relevance of our offer, or adapt our offer, to make it more pertinent to local businesses.

Other specific opportunities for us include:

• New T Level routes becoming available enabling us to offer new career paths for young people.

• New Higher Technical Qualifications to provide alternative higher level qualifications.

• A range of new initiatives funded by Government particularly around adult learning and skills which may enable us to target new kinds of provision at specific needs or groups.

• A diverse and growing population with a large 18-24 year old population who will be needing skills to enter the workforce.

• A local commitment to addressing the climate emergency.

• Well-established links with employers across sectors of local strategic significance.

• A new approach to adult skills arising from local devolution.

Our Vision

As we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, there will inevitably be a sense of uncertainty, lost confidence and missed opportunities for many people and businesses. Leicester suffered more than any other area in the country with extended lockdowns affecting individuals and companies.

We intend to make sure that the young people, adults and businesses in Leicester and Leicestershire are able to recover from this, to be resilient, confident and with a sense of purpose and optimism about their futures; we want them to be ambitious and positive about what they can do and how they can shape their own, and the local area’s future.

An inclusive and welcoming place to study

Leicester is one of the most diverse cities in the country with a local population that has a non-white majority. We want what we do, what we teach and how we behave to make everyone feel included and able to contribute to the College community.

We intend to provide a welcoming and inclusive environment in which to learn and work free from any form of discrimination, bullying or harassment. We also intend to provide a working environment in which all our staff and the wider College community are respected, appreciated and valued
for the contribution they make to the organisation.

In practice this means we:

• Treat everyone with respect.

• Promote and expect high standards of behaviour among our students, apprentices and staff.

• Hold ourselves to account for our actions and act with integrity.

• Take action to improve representation and engagement of under-represented groups in our staff.

• Address any issues of racism, inequity or discrimination head on.

We will be insistent in our determination to make Leicester College an anti-racist organisation.
We will focus on enhancing student and staff cultural awareness, understanding and confidence so that the College will be recognised as a sector leader. Our students and apprentices need to be confident advocates for equality and diversity. We will expect commitment and involvement from all our staff, students, partners and providers of goods and services in working to our Values and Mission.

A curriculum offer that meets the needs of Leicester

Our Mission and Values are rooted in the needs of the local community

We want to cement our reputation as the region’s leading further education college, delivering relevant technical and vocational education to equip students with the skills, knowledge and behaviours that will support them in work and life and will enable local businesses to flourish and compete locally, nationally and internationally.

Our programmes will focus on career-led pathways and progression routes specifically designed to
meet sector demand. They will enable the development of skills, improving employability, enhancing social mobility and promoting digital engagement. We will set high expectations and have high aspirations for all our students and apprentices. We will enable them to acquire the valuable social capital and personal skills and behaviours that will go with them throughout their lives.

Our curriculum offer and our support and facilities for students need to be culturally inclusive, anti-racist, accessible and relevant for all groups. Everyone must be able to get the most out of their College experience, excel in their studies and progress to their intended career or next educational destination.

We are committed to providing an outstanding apprenticeship offer for both employers and apprentices, including the most disadvantaged. In working with employers as partners, we need to ensure that our curriculum offer is well-understood, relevant, valued and adaptable to the changing economic and business environment.

By 2025, Leicester College will have fully aligned itself with national policy around higher technical and professional education and training. The College will continue to be seen as a highly credible and responsive provider of level 4+ awards that deliver positive student progression outcomes, aligned to the LLEP’s higher level skills strategy. Flexible approaches to learning will attract and engage a wide range of students and the student journey will maintain a clear line of sight to the world of work and foster graduate attributes.

Our customers and stakeholders should expect a high-quality teaching and learning experience, in modern facilities equipped for the world of work, and with courses that are designed to have positive impacts on the local economy.

A sustainable and environmentally conscious College

We want to be a leading college in the sector for our efforts to improve sustainability and a key partner in the City’s plans for improving the environment for people who live, work and study in Leicester. We have set a target of becoming carbon zero by 2030.

As a large employer with multiple sites educating and training thousands of students every year, we have a responsibility and a desire to make a positive contribution to local and national strategies to combat climate change.

We are training the citizens and workforce of the future and so it will be crucial that we educate our students, our staff and our partners about the importance of sustainability in combating climate change.

There is already significant interest and willingness among students to engage. We want to harness their enthusiasm and ensure they are central to decision making and are highly influential in how we implement actions to reduce the College’s carbon footprint.

Work has already been undertaken to incorporate sustainability within the curriculum through both the personal and social development curriculum and the sector specific qualifications delivered within curriculum areas. We will develop this through enrichment activities linked to the sustainability theme, tutorial programmes with a focus on sustainability and bi-annual surveys to inform direction and decisions. Crucial to this will be our ability to work with local companies to identify ways in which we can support emerging skills needs in the green economy. We will publish progress annually to show how we are progressing towards our targets.

OUR STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES

Our strategic objectives and KPIs for 2022-2025 are: