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Follow the tried and trusted route

THE pace of change in the construction industry and the skills shortages we’re currently seeing mean that post-16 and university-level courses are springing up daily to meet demand. Given their proliferation, how can you be sure you’re choosing the right provider or training scheme for your students or employees?

One genuine barometer of success in learning is a provider’s longevity. An established college with skilled, experienced lecturers is probably a more sensible choice than an untested entity with no track record of student success. Brand new facilities don’t stay that way long: it’s how colleges equip and update them on an ongoing basis, how they teach and how they match their teaching to the needs of employers that count in the long term.

Close working links with employers are crucial to student success. Vocational training must be intertwined with industry, feeding into the needs of local businesses and, in turn, absorbing these businesses’ expertise from ongoing advancement into developing areas such as green or smart building, prefabrication, BIM modelling and offsite/modular construction.

One college that has thrived through several industry booms and slumps is Moulton College. With its broad offering of post-16, university-level and apprenticeship construction courses for all levels of student, Moulton is completely flexible and very well used to adapting to industry’s changing needs.

From its main countryside campus in the village of Moulton and sites in Higham Ferrers and Daventry, Moulton College offers courses in various construction-related disciplines including furniture design and making, maintenance operations, construction management, painting and decorating, plumbing, stonemasonry, wall and floor tiling, bricklaying and site carpentry.

Some courses are full-time, some part-time; for degree-level apprenticeship courses, Moulton has chosen to run a modular block-release scheme, so employees can travel from far afield without an arduous weekly journey. Several already do this for Moulton’s degree-level Town Planning apprenticeship, for which the college is currently the northernmost in the UK; it makes much-needed education possible where it otherwise wouldn’t be, advancing skills even where there are hurdles.

Moulton’s beautiful site includes several hundred acres of grazing and arable land, though the college is close enough to Northampton to give students the best of both worlds.

Mark Bradshaw, construction programme co-ordinator at Moulton, sums things up: “We’ve been here almost 100 years: we’re definitely built to last. We’re forever building and refining, determined to stay ahead of the game despite the much-publicised pressures on academic institutions across the UK, and our award-winning students are making sure our name is well and truly out there. Here’s to the next hundred years.”

For more information about construction industry training at Moulton, call 01604 491131, email or visit www.moulton.ac.uk/construction-building-your-future

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