“Climate change and ecological destruction are some of the biggest challenges of our time.
“Schools, colleges and universities, like all institutions, have a responsibility to address them; and to meet the UK government’s target to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.
“Luminate Education Group seeks to do so much sooner.”
We will achieve net zero when the amount of greenhouse gases that we are producing is equal to or less than those we are removing from the atmosphere.
Wide-ranging actions to hit our target
Some of the main steps we will be taking to achieve the goal by 2035 or earlier – the pledge also includes an aspirational date of 2030 – include:
Changing our estate and buildings to become more energy efficient, reduce waste and generate their own energy
Developing sustainable travel plans for each of our sites
Embedding sustainability and green activities into staff development, student life and across our curriculum
Encouraging biodiversity on our sites, ensuring areas are dedicated to wildlife and planting
Partnering with organisations that value sustainability and hold events to support climate action
Our members will continue to provide, and develop, the green skills instruction that our students and partners need to thrive in a zero carbon economy too. And carbon literacy training will be offered to all our students.
Regular updates on progress
To monitor progress, we are also committed to measuring our carbon footprint – benchmark data is currently being collated – and publishing the findings regularly.
Looking ahead, the pledge – formulated by our Climate Emergency Committee – adds: “We will commit to our pledge and develop a detailed roadmap to outline the actions, resources, time and behaviours that will be necessary to achieve our objectives.
“We can’t do this alone. We will work with stakeholders, businesses and our community through networks, events and advocacy.”
Earlier this year, Keighley College teamed up with Camp America to offer up to 90 students across Luminate’s further education colleges a once-in-a-lifetime work experience opportunity in the United States over the summer.
The placements were offered through the Turing Scheme, a UK government programme for overseas study and work. The trip, designed to hone students’ employability skills as they look after and become role models to children at the camp, included travel, accommodation and living costs.
Keighley College’s principal, Kevin O’Hare, travelled out to see how the camp counsellors were getting on across the various sites they were sent to, what they were learning from their experiences and what their plans were following on from their placements.
His trip took him to Camp Laughing Waters in Gilbertsville, East Pennsylvania; Camp Herrlich on the border of New York state and Connecticut; and French Wood Sports & Art Camp in Hancock, NY. In each, he found the students who have taken advantage of the offer having the time of their lives.
Alongside teaching and sharing skills and knowledge with young campers, they have been making friends with the international cohort of camp counsellors and planning a number of subsequent adventures.
In a world in which, as it becomes more global, there can be seen a parallel stream of parochialism rising to the surface, making these connections with other cultures and people is an essential experience which we are proud to have been able to offer our students.
A new group has been started to ensure our staff can learn about and benefit from each other’s research.
Laura Kayes hopes the Research Development Group (RDG) will encourage colleagues from across multiple disciplines and campuses to share the extra work that so many of them are doing. The group also picks topics of general interest to discuss, and delves into existing research.
Laura, an Advanced Practitioner in teaching, learning and assessment and a Creative Arts lecturer at University Centre Leeds, uses her own research to inform her teaching.
She is currently undertaking funded* research – through her doctorate in education with the University of Sheffield – into the impact poverty can have on 16-19 year old learner outcomes in FE.
Laura was asked to take over the RDG shortly after it had started, at the end of 2021 – and jumped at the chance.
A chance to share insights
She said: “The group is about enhancing scholarly activity within Luminate Education Group. When I started conducting my own research, I realised that there’s a lot of valuable research that’s not being shared, and I wanted that to happen.
“Further education is rich in the diversity of its workforce but for some of our staff their first contact with higher education may be doing a PGCE or teaching qualification.
“So they’re not too familiar with higher education and it can seem a bit intimidating – there’s a tendency to always see the word ‘research’ and think it’s very academic, and I wanted to break that down.
“For the first session after I took over, I brought in research about how to be authentic in the workplace. That seemed a good starting place because it impacts everybody, is something we can all talk about and, though it had been researched, it had been done in a very human way.”
Gaining insights from outside our comfort zones
Laura is conscious that one of the strengths of the Luminate group – its size and breadth of campuses and disciplines – can also be a barrier when it comes to collaboration.
The RDG, however, is focused on encouraging colleagues to look outside of their own fields to see what they can learn from, and share with others.
She said: “As teachers we’re curious people, that’s why we’ve chosen to go into this field, but it’s really easy to become insular once term starts and we’re all so busy.
“We’re massive here at Luminate so sometimes it’s not so easy to share practice. But we all have lessons to be learnt from different fields.”
A bite-sized approach
Aware of how intimidating some research can seem, Laura is getting the group to adopt an approach that makes sophisticated ideas easily digestible.
At another recent meeting of the RDG, for example, Zach Cotter – who has a doctorate in neuroscience – spoke about his in-depth research into the workings of the brain.
The subject could easily have seemed impenetrable but Zach, a course leader for T Levels in Digital Design and Production and Digital Support Services, took pains to make sure that wasn’t the case.
Laura said: “Zach brought along some really scientific research about the mind and talked a lot about brain scans.
“There were some really challenging ideas in there but he was really gentle in his approach, so it didn’t feel overwhelming, and the feedback we got was that it was accessible to people.”
She added: “Going forward I want to use a gradual release model that lets us break research down into bite-sized pieces so we can discuss it, consider how we might apply it, and even conduct our own research on the impact of doing so.
“We have a lot of staff involved in research that not too many of the wider group know about, so the next step is to get them feeling like they have something valuable that they’re willing to share.”
The RDG is open to any colleague with an interest in educational research, and meets once every half-term.
*Laura’s research is being supported by the Association of Colleges (AoC) and Northern Council for Further Education (NCFE).
We have received £51m funding from the government to replace and upgrade some of our buildings.
The investment will ensure that we can create great spaces for our students so that they have access to modern, fit-for-purpose facilities.
Work will begin at Mabgate later this year and part of the expansion will include the development of new higher level technical and apprenticeship courses. There will also be a purpose built Adult education building, which will replace Leeds City College’s Enfield Centre.
As demand for student places continues to grow, the expansion programme for Mabgate will create much-needed community facilities and will add to the group’s portfolio of city centre bases.
The campus will also create space for University Centre Leeds and Leeds Conservatoire – bringing together the group’s further and higher education provisions.
There are also significant refurbishment plans for Park Lane Campus. Major works will also be carried out at Harrogate College and plans include the demolition of the old A block building, which will be replaced with a net zero, purpose-built building.
Keighley College is one of six further education providers across the region that will receive £140,000 to invest in specialist equipment to deliver electric vehicle and retrofit training, grow and embed green knowledge within the curriculum and improve links with businesses to develop and enhance their green skills.
As part of the West Yorkshire Consortium of Colleges (WYCC), the college will be involved in government plans to boost the nation’s skills and make sure more people can secure good, well-paid jobs that are closer to where they live.
A great opportunity to ‘level up’ for sustainability
Kevin O’Hare, Principal at Keighley College, said: “We are delighted to be working with partners across the region to help our young people develop green skills and learn about sustainability.
“Our Industrial Centre of Excellence for Advanced Manufacturing & Engineering provides students with the opportunity to gain real world industry experience and this project will allow us to explore more green opportunities available in these areas.
“It is our aim to ensure that we successfully embed sustainable development goals into our curriculum and prepare our learners for futures in a greener world.”
The Department for Education has announced that it will invest £2.6m in West Yorkshire’s colleges through the Strategic Development Fund.
The fund was launched in 2021 to help colleges and further education providers to transform their facilities and offer high quality technical training that better meet the needs of local employers and boost job opportunities for their communities.
This would mean that local businesses have access to the home-grown talent they need for the jobs of tomorrow and more people don’t need to leave their hometowns to get a good job.
Preparing a workforce for the future
Project Director of the West Yorkshire Consortium of Colleges, Joanne Patrickson said: “This funding will make a big difference to our colleges and in turn, the businesses and communities in West Yorkshire.
“Part of the funding will be a capital investment into equipment and machinery to allow our colleges to train the workforce in electric vehicle maintenance and retrofitting buildings.
“Colleges will be employing dedicated teams to work closely with businesses in the region to understand what help they need to become more sustainable, and the WYCC The Green Skills Service to help employers access the training and resources they need to take action.”
The £2.6m is contracted to be spent by 31 March 2023, but this initial investment will allow these new initiatives to establish and offer training that will prepare the workforce for a sustainable future.
University Centre Leeds and Leeds Conservatoire are celebrating achieving the highest student satisfaction scores, in their respective categories, of all the higher education providers in the city.
In the newly published 2022 National Student Survey (NSS) Leeds Conservatoire achieved an overall satisfaction rating of 80%, significantly higher than the sector average of 70.79%. The 85% satisfaction rating achieved by the University Centre (UC Leeds), meanwhile, made it the highest performing institution of its kind in Leeds – and one of the highest in Yorkshire.
Both institutions scored highly, and above the sector average, in many of the individual categories in the survey, too. In the conservatoire’s case, particular highlights were in teaching (82%), academic support (78%), learning opportunities (80%), assessment and feedback (78%), and learning community (77%).
Students also rated UC Leeds, which was registered under Luminate Education Group for the survey, very highly in specific areas. Those included: teaching (90.4%), learning opportunities (88.6%), academic support (87%), learning community (83.7%), assessment and feedback (83.5%), student voice (81.1%), and organisation and management (80.5%).
A testament to the dedication of our staff
The results delighted Janet Faulkner, Dean of Higher Education at UC Leeds, and Leeds Conservatoire Principal, Professor Joe Wilson.
Janet said: “These tremendous results are a testament to the continuing, and improving quality of our teaching and curriculum.
“Our staff are continuously looking at ways to enhance our courses and give students exceptional opportunities, so they leave here with the confidence and skills to aim high.
“Over the past year, we have welcomed a string of influential guest speakers and taken a group of learners to London for some invaluable experience at the Department for Transport. Other students have benefitted from an Erasmus+ trip to Greece, where their work in a hotel gave them an insight into the tourism, hospitality and food and drink sectors.
“Our students, as these impressive survey results indicate, clearly appreciate such efforts which is wonderful to see.”
Joe said:“We are very proud of the excellent NSS results for Leeds Conservatoire. This is testament to the hard work and dedication of our staff, and we would like to thank our students for recognising the conservatoire with this fantastic feedback.
“Our programmes are characterised by inspirational training with experts in a huge variety of specialisms, supported by bespoke workshops and masterclasses by visiting practitioners. Our facilities are industry-standard, our curriculum is designed around industry practice, and students have access to a wealth of professional partners and expert knowledge both within and outside our curriculum.
“We value excellence and elite training in all forms of music and performance making, and so offer the broadest range of genres of any conservatoire in Europe, giving our students unrivalled opportunities for collaboration. We are the only UK conservatoire to offer degrees combining two performance/production disciplines, reflecting the increasing focus on multidisciplinary practice in the music industry and offering even greater opportunity for students to expand their creative vision.”
Managed by the Office for Students, the NSS is one of the largest surveys of its kind and had almost 325,000 responses across the UK this year.
The survey gathers students’ opinions on the quality of their courses. That data is then used by prospective students to guide their choices, and by the education providers to shape and improve their offerings.
