Warwickshire College Group

WCG (Warwickshire College Group) logo 2016

Warwickshire College Group is the managing body that administers several colleges of further education in the English West Midlands, namely in the counties of Warwickshire and Worcestershire. Its most recent acquisition concerned its August 2016 merger with South Worcestershire College of which the two campuses then reverted to their historical names of Evesham College in Evesham and Malvern Hills College in Great Malvern.^[2] The merger makes it the largest group of further and adult education institutions in the country and one of the five colleges in the United Kingdom empowered by the Privy Council with the authority to award Foundation Degrees ^{[3] [4] [5]}

As of August 2016 the group manages seven colleges with a faculty of around 1,000 staff for approximately 17,000 students. The group offers more than 1,000 courses over 20 areas of discipline with an A-Level pass rate of 98.6%.^[6]

Colleges

Royal Leamington Spa College

Moreton Morrell was the first equine college in Britain

The Power Industry Academy at Rugby College

Pershore College

Warwick Trident College

Evesham College

Malvern Hills College

The group group provides National Curriculum courses and vocational education in a broad range of subjects to students aged 16 and over. It was formed in 1996 with the merger of Mid-Warwickshire College in Leamington Spa and Warwickshire College for Agriculture, Horticulture, Equine & Related Studies (formerly Warwickshire College of Agriculture) in Moreton Morrell and became Warwickshire College. In a further expansion the college merged with Rugby College in 2003, followed shortly by a new campus opening in Warwick called the Trident Centre. It then merged with a fifth site at Henley-in-Arden. In August 2007, Warwickshire College merged with Pershore College, Centre of Horticultural Excellence, in Worcestershire, spreading Warwickshire College across the two counties. In 2014, each college was given an individual identity in that Warwickshire College Royal Leamington Spa Centre became Royal Leamington Spa College, part of Warwickshire College Group.

In 2016 a merger between WCG and South Worcestershire College took place,^[7] adding two further campus' in Worcestershire at Evesham and Malvern. At this point, it was decided that the college would trade as WCG to avoid conflicts between Warwickshire in the name, and three campus being in Worcestershire.

The college has Centre of Vocational Excellence (CoVE) awards in engineering, equine, farriery, maintenance and construction, and leadership and management. Following a March 2015 inspection, an Ofsted report accorded the college an overall Grade 2 (Good) for its performance.^[1] The college is a member of the Collab Group of high performing schools.^[8]

Locations

Henley-in-Arden College

The Henley-in-Arden centre focuses on sports related studies, health and beauty, fashion and textiles and offers courses from further education right through to postgraduate qualifications. The centre has a £2 million sports centre and sports academies. The college is affiliated to British Colleges’ Sport (BCS) and takes part in competitions covering team and individual sports. After a reassessment of the colleges resources and the students demographic and locality, Henley-in-Arden College courses are now run at Moreton Morrell College and Royal Leamington Spa College, but gymnasium facilities still exist.^[9]

Royal Leamington Spa College

The main campus for WCG is located in Leamington Spa. It lies to the west of the town centre, near the join of Warwick to Leamington Spa. It offers courses including A Levels, business, health care, hair and beauty, construction, travel and tourism and supported learning programmes. The Centre has a range of facilities, including a learning centre and library, a lecture theatre, hair and beauty salon, sports hall and gym, a travel centre, college shop and a children's nursery. The Leamington Spa centre is also the current home to Warwickshire School of Arts. The school of arts offers foundation diploma in art and design and extended/national diploma in fashion and clothing.^[10]

Moreton Morrell College

Located in the Warwickshire countryside, the Moreton Morrell centre offers courses in equine, farriery and blacksmithing, agriculture, countryside, arboriculture, environment, horticulture, construction, floristry, animal welfare and veterinary nursing. The resources include a 345-hectare commercial farm with a large dairy herd, beef and sheep, wildlife habitats including woodlands, grasslands and wetlands. The College also has equine facilities, with stabling for over 100 horses, an indoor school, a covered school and large outdoor riding arenas. There are 3 forges, purpose-built centres for horticulture and veterinary nursing, as well as a large animal welfare centre housing a wide range of animals and facilities.

Pershore College

Pershore College is situated on a 60 hectare site near Evesham, Worcestershire (though close to the Warwickshire border) and offers courses in Horticulture, Arboriculture, Animal Welfare, Veterinary Nursing, Agritech and Countryside Management. The resources include a commercial plant nursery, plant centre, fruit unit with fruit juice production and pick your own facilities, extensive amenity grounds and commercial glasshouses. The College also manages several national plant collections in the popular and much visited College gardens. The College is home to the Royal Horticultural Society Regional Centre and the Alpine Garden Society. There is also the specialist resource of an animal unit.

Pershore College was originally an independent institution founded in 1954 to train horticultural workers in the Vale of Evesham. It began offering higher education courses in 1993 and was merged into Warwickshire College in August 2007.

Rugby College

The Rugby centre's new building opened in 2011. It houses the Power Industry Academy, to train people in power generation manufacture. The centre also includes a Learning Resource Centre, sports hall and gym, astroturf pitch, meeting and conference facilities, purpose-built art, design and craft workshops, hair and beauty salons and college nursery.

Warwick Trident College

The Trident Business and Technology Centre in Warwick is a relatively new building. It houses a conference suite on the top floor with catering facilities. There is also a Learning Resource Centre with an open learning area and internet enabled PC's. There are also a number of computer suites for classes around the building. Many companies, including Alstom, Cable and Wireless, Jaguar Landrover, Rolls Royce and Telent, send their apprentices to this centre. There is a large workshop area for the Motor Vehicle courses with vehicles donated by manufacturers for use by the college and students to repair and maintain. There is a traditional engineering workshop, equipped with lathes, milling machines and grinding machines. There is also a materials lab along with electrical/electronic and pneumatics labs. The courses studied here are mainly engineering and motor vehicle based. There is also a 3D design area which has facilities for model making.

In 2015, Trident 2 opened, a specialist engineering building with workshops and labs tailored to the high demands of the colleges customers.^[11]

Evesham College

The Evesham campus is a short walk from Evesham town centre. It is well placed for bus links from the surroundings area and has many facilities including state of the art motor vehicle workshops, a hair & beauty training salon and energy training centre.^[12] It merged^[7] with Warwickshire College Group in August 2016 whilst part of South Worcestershire College and is now known as Evesham College, part of WCG.

Malvern Hills College

Malvern Hills College began as Malvern School of Art in 1886^[13] and has continued this tradition since, being at the present site at the foot of the Malvern Hills since the 1900's. Other facilities include the Malvern Community Learning Centre and dedicated hair and beauty salons.^[13] It merged with Warwickshire College Group in August 2016 whilst part of South Worcestershire College and is now known as Malvern Hills College, part of WCG.

Alumni

• Broadcaster Chris Beardshaw, who has hosted gardening programmes on the BBC and Channel 4, and is famed for his work on Gardeners' World, attended Pershore College.
• David Domony, TV gardener and broadcaster, attended Pershore College
• Michael Burston (Würzel), guitarist of the group Motörhead, attended Pershore College in the mid 1990s.
• Hussein Chalayan and Luella Bartley both studied for a National Diploma in Fashion and Clothing at Warwickshire College. Both went on to study at Central Saint Martins, and both have won British Fashion Designer of the year.
• Trina Gulliver the nine-times World Professional Darts champion, taught carpentry and joinery at the college until 2005.
• Julie White, British businesswoman

References

External links

• Official Website of WCG