South Essex College
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South Essex College - high-quality training opportunities for Essex
A key element of the Essex business infrastructure is the quality of education, training and professional development that underpins the county’s excellent skills base. South Essex College of Further and Higher Education is one of the leading providers, offering innovative, high-quality training and development opportunities to employees and businesses in Essex. The College has many resources and specialisms and caters for more than 20,000 students across three campuses and is pouring highly-skilled workers into the county’s labour pool with strengths in engineering, business, construction, media, information technology, creative arts, beauty, sports and catering.
The College has a wide range of accreditations that businesses can draw upon as well as memberships of many National Skills Academies across sectors such as Logistics, Retail Skills, Creative and Cultural Skills and Financial Services. Recent growth has enabled the College to offer a wider range of courses with a strong vocational and professional focus - a key resource for the Essex economy. “The vision for South Essex College is ambitious to match the ambitions of local businesses,” says Carol Anson-Higgs, Vice-Principal, Business Development.
“We aim to provide outstanding education and skills training from Levels 2 and 3 up to full honours degrees for young people and adults in Essex so that we can better meet the needs of local people, employers and communities.”
As part of that process, Carol Anson-Higgs recognises the importance of tailoring training and development to the needs of individual companies in Essex. “Our Business Development team has an in-depth knowledge of the Essex business environment. We understand that every organisation has individual training needs. By developing specific short or long programmes in consultation with businesses we ensure that training can be delivered in the best way. We also help companies access full or partial funding for their training needs.”
To give Essex businesses the widest possible choice of training and development opportunities, the College has relationships with other colleges, universities and private sector training organisations, several of whom are members of the NOVA Partnership. “A partnership with the University of Essex, and agreement with the University of East London enable us to offer degree and foundation degree programmes in a wide range of vocational subjects,” says Carol Anson-Higgs. “We can also call on the resources of other colleges and providers to deliver quality-assured courses on the rare occasion that we cannot deliver a very unusual specialism”.
The College is also well equipped for the future and hosts some of the best facilities in Essex with one of the finest equipped media departments in the country and a performance pod/lecture theatre designed from the inside-out utilizing the latest acoustic surveys. It also became the first official Nikon photography Academy in the UK. These first class facilities are made available for businesses to hire allowing them to host a wide range of events such as meetings and conferences.
Looking ahead, Carol Anson-Higgs believes that Essex companies will continue to build a strong competitive advantage.
“Our experience is that large and small companies in the county are maintaining their investment in training and development.”
South Essex College is helping companies benefit from a highly skilled workforce and an effective knowledge transfer mechanism.
“That can only be good for Essex and we are committed to supporting them.”
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