Newcastle College & Foundation Degrees – An Integrated Approach to Providing the Skills that Business Requires
Background
The new economic landscape has brought into sharp focus the skills required to grow and sustain the North East economy, one that has a solid foundation of world leading industry and science practices; this is especially important within the regions Pharmaceuticals and Analytical Chemistry industry.
NewcastleCollege vocational education is being designed in direct collaboration with employer clusters to meet market skills demands. This has created a need for a more flexible system of course development, which can respond quickly to market and industry changes while addressing the identified skills shortages the region and industry faces.
After much detailed consultation, NewcastleCollege has developed a generic structure for Foundation Degrees, allowing the qualification to be adapted quickly and efficiently to meet core industry needs whilst also catering for some individual employer requirements too. More than 60 subject areas are now covered by Foundation Degrees at the college, all combining work-based learning with classroom theory.
The Sector- Pharmaceuticals and Analytical Chemistry
35% of the UK's GDP within the Pharmaceuticals Industry is manufactured within the North East of England. The top five of the largest speciality chemical companies have bases in the region. However, most of these industries are having to contend with an ever increasing “skills gap” and as a resultthere is a huge requirement for appropriately trained staff at technician levels within these industries. Newcastle College School of Applied Science & Technology has worked hard with the related Sector Skills Councils (SSCs) including Cogent and Semtato identify the needs of organisations within the sector and has set up employer forums to address the qualification needs of employers from this sector. One of the most effective and successful methods has been through the development of sector specific Foundation degrees.
Ricki Zebik, Quantum-Specials with Rob Storey, Gordon Crombie and David Flatman, all from the School of Applied Science & Technology
The Foundation Degrees (FdSc)
The key to understanding the approach taken with Foundation degrees at NewcastleCollege is to understand that they have been validated to provide students with both the practical skills and the underpinning academic requirements of the sector. As employers have been instrumental in the design and delivery of these qualifications it is therefore possible for students from a wide range of companies to study generic academic and skills units. An example of this is the development of a sector specific unit for the study of Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP).
GMP sets out guidelines for how pharmaceutical labtechnicians operate, build facilities and lower risks. It isfundamental to effective practice that employees andstudents in this sector have good knowledge of GMP. By
joining academic expertise with industry knowledge,The School of Applied Science & Technology at NewcastleCollege together with Quantum Specials has beenable to lead and deliver a specific unit that truly meets the needs of industry.
The unit has also brought together competitor employees and students and is unique in being soinclusive and wide reaching.
Gordon Crombie (right of picture) leading the GMP unit in Quantum Specials clean room laboratory
Benefits
By creating genuine sector led partnerships, Newcastle College School of Applied Science has enabled organisations to meet their technician training needs within the Pharmaceutical sector.
Feedback has shown that the flexibility of the foundation degrees format has impressed employers in the sector time and time again, with the ability to “build” units around work being undertaken, one of the most important factors. This has resulted in organisations working with NewcastleCollege for both recruitment and “up-skilling” of staff. Indeed one of the major drivers of the success of the lab technicians’ Foundation Degree as been the heavy involvement of the sector in the development of these courses.
The Way Ahead
More and more employers in this sector are seeing the benefits of “growing their own” technicians to degree level rather than taking on graduates for retraining. They can pay less and get employees trained in the techniques of the organisation and to a standard that they dictate.
The process of working with employers within the pharmaceutical sector to identify generic skills needs, develop flexible qualifications that meet practical and theoretical requirements, and the creation of progression routes within organisations to keep staff skills current, show that there is a willingness by Newcastle College to grasp the skills challenge presented.
The Foundation Degree for laboratory technicians as developed by NewcastleCollege is a working model, demonstrating what can be achieved by structured consultation throughout the development process.
More sector specific units are being planned and added as technologies and challenges within the sector change. (E.g. move away by the pharmaceutical sector from chemical based to bio based drugs).
The unique flexibility of the foundation degree structure has enabled NewcastleCollege to work with the pharmaceutical sector to train the next generation of lab technicians and start to address the skills gap prevalent within this sector.