Why students and employers love B and FC during national Colleges Week

As part of event, the Love Our Colleges campaign is encouraging college employees to share positive stories about their institution and is supported by college employees, students and education unions.

Simon Hughes, vice principal quality and curriculum at B&FC, said: “Colleges Week is a fantastic national initiative and provides an additional platform to showcase all the positive work that B&FC does to ensure our students have the best possible experience and our employer partners get the highly skilled workforce they require.

“As the anchor educational institution on the Fylde Coast and the largest college in Lancashire, B&FC is a major part of our community. Not only do we provide high-quality education and training to provide a highly skilled workforce for industry, our students and staff are also involved in a very wide range of community projects which not only add value to their own development, but contribute to improving our society.”

Connor Campbell, Level 3 Game Design Development, 18, from South Shore, said: “Game design is a hard industry to get into but the College has taught me relevant skills that you wouldn’t get in other places and really prepared me for working in industry.

Elaine Wright, BA Hons Health and Social Care (Adult), 52, from Cleveleys said: "I didn’t do particularly well at school. I struggled with exams and left when I was 17. I’m much better with coursework and assessments.

James Bleakley, Level 3 Construction & The Built Environment, 19, from Thornton Cleveleys, said: “I liked working with materials at school but this course opened my eyes to other careers, like quantity surveying. My tutors organised a lot of work experience for me, then helped me to secure an apprenticeship as a quantity surveyor with Holden and Lee, who are now paying for me to do a degree.”

“I’ve always enjoyed maths and that really helped, particularly as we got towards the end of the programme where there was a lot of theory involved.”

Bernard Kellett, Early Careers Manager at BAE Systems, said: BAE Systems benefits greatly from working with the College.

"The results have been outstanding.”

"In more recent years - with the development of B&FC’s degree programmes - Springfields has also had the chance to offer its employees the opportunity to study engineering degrees part-time.