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10 Oct 2011

Will University Technical Colleges pay off?

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Can new University Technical Colleges produce the next generation of world-class engineers, designers and scientists? Katie Razzall has been to one in Walsall to find out.

The Black Country University Technical College (UTC) opened five weeks ago. A pioneering project for Education Secretary Michael Gove; 13 new UTCs have been announced and a total of 16 will open over the next year.

They are aimed at students aged for 14 to 19 who want to develop technical, rather than academic, skills.

In Walsall, the mission is clear: to develop the next generation of world class engineers, designers and scientists.

Most of these pupils already seem to know what they want to be: an “aeronautical engineer”, a “mechanic”, an “aerodynamic Formula One engineer”, they told Channel 4 News. One said most of her friends outside college would say “popstar”.

The school day is 8.30am to 5pm Monday to Thursday, 8.30am to 4pm on Fridays. It is a working week to prepare these students for the future. Many are only 14, but none seem to mind. “I’d only be on my Playstation, like my other friends,” one pupil admitted.

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The college has an Academy feel, it is disciplined with smart uniforms, and there is no hiding the corporate involvement. Lunch is dolled out under the names of the firms who have invested in the college. The blazers even have a “Siemens” badge on them.

The German engineering giant is the college’s main sponsor; it has paid for the uniform, donated software, training and equipment. Forty companies in all are involved and in return they get a say in the curriculum and a steady stream of work placements.

Unions complain the UTCs mean children are specialising too young, that resources are being diverted from mainstream education and that the government is subsidising the work employers should be doing to train staff.

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