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MLT/FM-MAN-Report: Visit to Canterbury College UK 2016-11-25 i VEM/met
REPORT ON VISIT TO CANTERBURY
COLLEGE:
Letho TS, Chechile F, Mabena VE, Tsotetsi ME and Tsomo MS
25/11/2016
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REPORT ON VISIT TO CANTERBURY COLLEGE by
Mabena VE, Tsotetsi ME and Tsomo MS Letho T and Chechile F
MALUTI TVET COLLEGE FLAVIUS MAREKA
COLLEGE
25/11/2016
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Table of Contents
Summary ..................................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
1 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1
2 The visit ................................................................................................................................ 3
3 Progress made on the project ............................................................................................. 33
4 Opportunities to venture into ............................................................................................... 34
4.1 From the meeting of 15th ............................................................................................... 34
4.2 From the engagements of 16th November: .................................................................. 36
4.3 From the engagements of 17th ...................................................................................... 36
5 From general interactions .................................................................................................... 36
6 Management plan: ............................................................................................................... 36
6.1 Linked to the project ...................................................................................................... 36
7 Recommendations............................................................................................................... 37
8 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 38
9 References ............................................................................ Error! Bookmark not defined.
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1 Introduction
In September/October 2014 there was an invite from the British Council for South African TVET
Colleges to apply for partnering with the UK colleges. The college applied as requested and a
positive reply was received in December 2014 that Maluti TVET College had been selected
through the British Council processes to participate in the project. The UK College was identified
as New College Stamford and arrangements had to be made for the visit by the UK College to
Maluti. This procedure took place from 09 to13 February 2015.
The aims indicated in the extract from the application form stated that the “British Council
international skills partnerships bring together UK organisations with leading counterpart
organisations around the world in order to deliver innovative output-led projects that focus on
enhancing approaches to skills development internationally. Partnership projects are pre-
commercial and have at their heart the exchange of knowledge and expertise. Partnership
projects cover a wide range of sectors, from fashion to engineering, and a number of themes
including employer engagement, quality assurance, entrepreneurship development and
progression routes. Partnerships are supported financially by British Council to deliver projects,
typically funded for one year with a view to becoming self-sustaining thereafter. In certain cases,
strongly performing partnerships may be eligible for further funding beyond that period”. Maluti
TVET saw these aims as very relevant to it and to the sector hence the application.
Further to that the benefits of this partnership were outlined as the British Council partnerships
offering a range of benefits including:
nurturing innovative approaches to skills development, including in the area of curriculum
development, quality assurance and employer engagement, across a range of thematic
areas and sectors
enhancing the culture, profile and reputation of participating organisations
building relationships with other organisations including employers
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offering unrivalled staff and student development opportunities
helping participating organisations build a presence in the partner country
enabling the organisations to identify new business opportunities and
informing the development of national skills strategies in ways that impact positively on
the skills and employability of millions of people”.
The advantages outlined above tally perfectly with our existence as of the colleges in the
country. The route of internship, WBE, WIL and artisan development seeks to expose students
and staff to the workplace during or post study which in due course facilitates employability. The
area of curriculum development, quality assurance and employer engagement is at the heart of
our deliverables. Management is duty-bound to keep abreast with the rest of the world on latest
trends. This is the reason why we saw it fit to participate and reap the above values.
In 2015 Maluti TVET College partnered with New College Stamford to deliver the employability
skills and the project, which was a success, moved from the foundation phase to the advance
phase in 2016. Maluti was expected to continue with the New College Stamford in the advance
stage and bring in another college that would be mentored in the British Council partnerships
and then in the next phase the much mentored college would be expected to start its own
partnership through the same initiative hence Flavius Mareka College came on board. Part of
this advance phase was the Leadership Exchange Programme (LEP) where senior managers
are expected to spent ten days in UK College with a special focus area and reciprocate the visit.
The New College Stamford pulled out of the partnership due to the Ofsted audit that was
prioritized and Canterbury College came on board as a lead college in UK in the partnership.
Canterbury College official visited the two South African colleges from the 1st- 5th August 2016
to look at the programme offerings and areas of collaboration. It was out of the visit that the
three college sat down and work on a proposal to the British Council. The proposal was
approved with the areas of project plan being:
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Implementation of the employability skills
The implementation of the enterprise competition
The active Links Recruitment Service and
The Solar energy
It was on the basis of the above project plan objectives that the two South African College had
to visit Canterbury College, with in mind of the above objectives and also to spot-check the
extend of implementing the project.
The delegates left South Africa on 13 November 2016 to interact with Canterbury College with
the view of looking at the viability of the project and came back on 19 November 2016.
2 The visit
The delegates arrived late on the 14th November 2016 with only time to refresh and prepare for
the following day.
The following day on the 15th November 2016, the delegates had a welcome tour at the college.
The first place visited was the Students
Information Centre (SIC). The Centre is divided
into sections for general advice on course
information and fees, funding, bursaries, career
information etc. Web based marketing strategy
is used to market the college. Information on all
programmes offered at the college is uploaded
as webpages on the college’s website.
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From the course information desk, a student can proceed to get information about funding.
Information on funding is handled by the funding desk within the Centre. Funding provided to
students range from tuition, meals allowance and transport or travelling. Traveling allowance
includes using public transport like bus or train. It can also be extended to cases where students
uses their own cars. However each case is treated individually depending on the circumstances
surrounding the individual student.
It was interesting to realize that for transport, students are provided with bus tickets and the
college give students these tickets instead of giving them cash. Like in our country, students
who meet the criteria (whose household income is falling within the specific category/ threshold)
are supported financially after submitting the supporting documents with their applications for
financial assistance.
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It is at this Centre where students also collect their meal allowance tickets that could be used at
the college cafeteria for meals.
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Once the prospective student have been given information about the college, the next step
followed will be to register for the course. We moved to the next department of the college where
student registration is done. The
Registry Information Point (department)
has three sections namely, admissions,
student records and examinations. All
examinations of the college are handled
here including online examinations.
Student’s marks for all assessments are
captured and stored at this section
(point). Having completed their courses,
student’s results are processed at this department. The certificates are then claimed from the
awarding bodies and issued to the students.
Canterbury College, like other colleges/ campuses visited provides students with support in
many forms. They have an atmosphere that encourages students to be at the college at all
times. This college has fully functional library that have books, resources and laptops for their
students. The library also
make provision for students
who do not have access to
laptops by way of borrowing
laptops to the students.
Laptops are stored in cabinets/
lockers that can be opened
using student cards and each
time student borrow a laptop,
his information is automatically
recorded by the system for the
specific laptop until the laptop is returned. These lockers also have cables inside for charging
the battery of a laptop. After using a laptop, a student connects a laptop to a charger that is
located in each laptop drawer of the cabinet to ensure that the next student to use the laptop
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finds it with a fully charged battery. Every student can use his or her student card to borrow a
laptop that can be used in the library and laptops are returned after use.
The most common findings on emotions or emotionality and achievement are negative
associations between situational or dispositional anxiety and school outcomes (such as test
performance, course grades, and high school completion; Duchesne, Vitaro, Larose, &
Tremblay, 2008; Seipp, 1991).
In addition to the academic support, students are
having a place where they are given the emotional
support. At this place student are given are given
counselling and have rooms that can accommodate
different religions for students to pray and worship
according to their faith and beliefs.
The meeting with two officials dealing with Active Links Recruitment Service took place later that
day. The active links like the name says, plays an important role of linking students with
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employers. The college uses active links to place students for apprenticeship with the
employers. The active link department has two arms or divisions. Students are recruited for the
employers by the college’s recruitment arm of the active links department. The second arm of
the active links department of the college ensures that students are supported throughout the
apprenticeship period by developing support programmes for the students in the apprenticeship
programmes. This is achieved because there is a team of administrators. They are all
responsible for the paperwork of managing and keeping track record of each individual student’s
progress taking part in the apprenticeship programme. In addition to the team there are 03
support officers of which one is responsible for additional learning support. Two support officers
are responsible for risk apprentices. Risk apprentices ranges from those at the risk of losing
their jobs to those having mental problems. Also students who misses their exams falls into the
risk apprentices’ category.
The successes of the programme:
Income is generated for the college.
Over 90% of their students are still with the same employer after 05 years.
High employment rate of students.
Teaching and learning is linked with the needs of employers.
Good relationship between the college and employers because employers assess the
progress of students and give feedback to the college.
Students’ progress well in their next level as they have more understanding of their
courses because they have had practical at the employers.
About 600 of their students are taking part in different apprenticeship programmes this
year this means more employers are involved with what is happening at the college.
Employers trust the college in terms of providing them with students who will complete
the programme. The college has systems or assessment tools that helps in identifying
correct students for the different apprenticeship programmes.
Introduction of a high quality work experience programme for students doing the
vocational programmes that require students to have workplace experience. The same
as our NCV and Report 191 students requiring WBE in South Africa.
Employers are invited to talk to students.
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Active links team work closely with the curriculum team. The active links team is business
oriented and have knowledge of what employers want, where else the curriculum team
focuses on students. This creates a gap between the two teams that could only be closed
by working closely together.
Canterbury College performed well during their last Ofsted inspection for apprenticeships.
Recruitment team members are all industry qualified and are members of the Recruitment
and Employment Confederation (REC) and it becomes easy for them to approach
employers.
Having looked at the job descriptions stated by the employers during their meetings with the
active links team, the recruitment team decides on the type of apprenticeship programme that
will suit the employer’s needs. Then the college advertise for the apprentices and screen the
applications. Candidates for apprenticeship programmes are sourced from outside the College
and they ultimately become students of the Canterbury College. This exercise contributes to the
number increase of the students at the college. During interviews their employability skills are
assessed and honest feedback is given to each individual.
Where gaps are identified, the team helps the candidates with advises for future applications
and sometimes in assisting them with curriculum vitae (CVs) preparation for those who do not
have them. In so doing they increase the employability skills of the youth or community.
Canterbury College’s active links provision team have introduced the concept of work based
assessors. The role of these assessors is to monitor the progress of students at work places
during their apprenticeship journey. They use checklists and the list of responsibilities to track
the progress and to report back to the team. In improving the quality of their work, they also
introduced the concept of smarter assessor for all programmes at the college.
The next stop was with the Deputy Head who outlined the curriculum activities at the college.
According to her, Further Education (FE) in the United Kingdom (UK) was reformed five years
ago when the study programmes were implemented at the colleges. Study programmes were
developed to give colleges the flexibility to have a number of elements to a student’s experience.
To deliver experience to student that will prepare him or her for work. Work experience is the
fundamental of study programme. In a study programme, a student is expected to do a minimum
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of 30 hours work experience and more where appropriate. Where possible this experience
should be done externally with an employer. Active links engages with an employer to ensure
that student will fit requirements of that employer and the outcomes within the work experience
supports that student’s development.to
be able to get employment. The study
programme also caters for students
with lower grades in mathematics and
English. Before these students can
enroll for vocational qualifications, they
first have to do Mathematics and
English to develop their skills further as
the vocational qualifications sits on
mathematics and English. Vocational
staff at Canterbury College is expected
to embed mathematics and English as
part of their development. Throughout
the academic year the college talks to
the students about their future
destinations, whether they will further
their studies at universities or join
companies for employment or become
apprentices after completing their
courses. Students in the UK are
encouraged to become apprentices so
that developing a framework of skills
that will enable them to survive in the industry. The government supports apprenticeships.
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The present challenge experienced by the colleges in the United Kingdom is English and
Mathematics. Currently 48% of students enrolling at the Canterbury College have low pass rate
in English and Mathematics. From discussions around challenges in mathematics and English
mentioned above, it can be concluded that students in further education and training institutions
face the same challenges no matter where they are in the world. Things that influences their
learning are the same e.g. language usage in texting and social media.
During the discussions the issues around students absenteeism was touched and Canterbury
College approach is to create an environment where teaching and learning assessment is
improved by reviewing from time to time the following:
What the college is delivering to the students.
What the students are interested in,
What is going to enable them to get employed,
Constantly reviewing the planning to ensure that they deliver the right curriculum.
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These help the college in getting teaching and learning assessment right, and there will be less
problems on learner behavior, there won’t be issues on attendance and hence there will not be
problems with learner achievements because students are engaged. Where teaching and
learning is weak there will be problems. Poor attendance is viewed as a symptom of something
going wrong in a particular class and if a strong teaching team can be developed and teaching
and learning skills are developed, then student attendance will improve. The concept of flipped
classroom has also been introduced at Canterbury College. They utilize social media like
Facebook to ensure that students do a bit of a research before they come to a classroom.
Students’ prior knowledge is developed before sessions so that they will have questions to ask.
They try to make things relevant to what is happening in the media. In some classes this concept
works very well.
When conducting class visits, their interest is not to look at the lesson plans but to see that the
lessons have been planned.
Plumbing workshop where the training on gas and also solar installations was visited next.
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In the plumbing workshop, students are training in different aspects from installation of baths,
toilets and basins to the installation of gas pipes and water pipes. Our interest was on the hot
water solar installations as this forms part of our project with Canterbury College. Before
students can enrol for courses in solar energy geyser installations, they should have completed
the basic training in plumbing.
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The delegates travelled to Folkestone Campus on the 16th November 2016 where they tour
through the campus and activities explained. They were also taken to the partnership place used
or training of students in collaboration with the local council.
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They travelled back to Canterbury College for the meeting with Employability home-grown
course. Later the same day a follow-up meeting in the solar energy workshop where learning
material was also dealt with took place. Finally the same day a networking session with
employers was held which gave an insight on how the college handles the employers and also
making sure that the college is accessible to them.
The Start my Biz Project done by Canterbury City Council was attended to on the 17th November
2016.
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At the end of project the delegates rushed to travel to Broadstairs where they toured through the
college hotel that is run in collaboration with the students. A debriefing of the visit was concluded.
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The flight departure was scheduled 18th November 2016 at 20h00 UK time and arrival on 19th
November 2016 at 16h30 SA time which happened as planned.
3 Progress made on the project
To date the following has been achieved through this project:
Mr VE Mabena, Mr Letho, Mrs Chechile, Mr MS Tsomo and Mr ME Tsotetsi travelled for
site seeing and engagement with Canterbury College in UK on the project plan.
The project targets reviewed through the visit
The project platforms set-up
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The pipeline activities are:
1) A trip to Jordan on Bringing Learning Home Conference
2) A visit within January-March 2017 to train the trainers on Solar energy.
3) To train the LO lecturers on employability skills
4) Regular update of the platform
4 Opportunities to venture into
4.1 From the meeting of 15th
Share resources on active links
Share resources on organizing events for employers to meet.
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Create student friendly environment by purchasing sports and recreation equipment at
campuses.
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4.2 From the engagements of 16th November:
Share resources on starting commercial branches of the college.
Share resources on employability skills programmes.
4.3 From the engagements of 17th
Student participation in college commercial branches for placement. Establishment of
cafeterias at campuses so that hospitality students can do their practicals and where
business studies students will also be placed.
5 From general interactions
1) The Canterbury College is ready to exchange partnership project plan resources with
Maluti and Flavius Mareka Colleges.
6 Management plan:
6.1 Linked to the project
ACTIVITY ACTIONS TIMEFRAMES
& RESPONS.
1) Trip to Jordan
1) One rep from Maluti, one from
Flavius Mareka and one from
Canterbury Colleges.
26 Nov 16 – 01
Dec 16
2) Train the trainer on solar energy
1) Sent an expert from Canterbury to
train the trainer on solar energy.
2) SA colleges to procure relevant
material for the training.
Jan 2017 –
March 2017
3) Train the LO lecturers on Employability
skills
1) Training Flavius Mareka and Maluti
staff on employability skills
Jan 17 –March
17
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4) Virtual platforms 1) Create the virtual platform where all
project information is shared.
2) The outlook platform opted as the best
to use.
24 Nov 16
5) Enterprise Competitions To be dealt with in the 3rd quarter as per
the guideline provided.
April 17 – June
17
6) Publicise the project on all websites All activities of the project be publicized
in the college websites. Maluti was noted
that its website was under construction.
Nov 16
onwards.
7) Benchmarking report 1) A monkey survey in place.
2) All colleges to allow students to
access and complete the survey.
3) Mr Tsomo avail collated reports for a
final report to British Council.
4) Maluti TVET College completed the
survey. Survey results sent to
Canterbury College to be included in
the partnership report.
5) Canterbury and Flavius Mareka to
conduct the survey with their
students.
21 Nov 16
7 Recommendations The SA colleges visited the UK College and were convinced that the proposals were actually
implementable.
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7.1 The timeframes of the project be adhered to
7.2 The target envisaged in the employability skills be reduced
7.3 The SA Colleges ensure the relevant resources are in place for the solar energy training.
7.4 Time made available for the training of the lecturers on the employability skills
8 Conclusion The visit to UK was indeed beneficial for the partners and through it a lot was shared. The
plans were executed quite well and the UK College put a lot of effort in the planning session
for the success of the trip. The Yarrow Hotel owned by the UK College was an eye opener and
such initiatives are of value to the actual vocational and technical education and training due to
the arrangements and the implementation of hotel processes using students and the College
hotel.