Strengthening partnerships between colleges and home builders
Partner a College aims to increase collaboration between home builders and colleges to improve outcomes for further education students on full time construction courses.
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About the Partner a College pilot
Funded by CITB, Partner a College is a two-year pilot programme that aims to better align vocational education with workforce needs, to ensure colleges equip students with work-ready skills home builders and contractors need in order for more students to enter the workforce.
The programme brings together colleges and home building employers to co-design a framework of progressive activities as well as a digital toolkit to encourage and help sustain industry involvement. 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.
As part of the programme, we will deliver resources that provide clarity of process with clear guidance that will encourage, inspire, and help employers and colleges move from initial engagement to sustained collaboration.
Understanding the challenge
Less than 40% of construction students enter the home building industry
There are over 35,0000 vacancies in building and construction
There is a historical shortage of FE Tutors and assessors
As it stands, less than 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.
Participating employers and colleges
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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