Students and employers in Stafford are offered courses from access level right through to a PhD thanks to highly developed further and higher education links.
Stafford College’s long-established links with the University of Wolverhampton have evolved to include a wide-ranging portfolio of courses in the hospitality and licensed industries.
Stafford offers entry-level vocational courses which can lead to GNVQs or three-year sandwich HND courses which can then be topped up to a full degree with an extra year’s study at Wolverhampton.
This model echoes the two-plus-two courses expected to be a key feature of Sir Ron Dearing’s recommendations on the future of the university system. The agreement with academics at Wolverhampton allows courses to be flexible - moving between full and part-time study, or even allowing further or higher-level courses delivered in the workplace.
The links have extended to computing and engineering courses at Stafford, where the college runs foundation-level year zero programmes designed to give students an entry to a degree course.
Staff see high demand for such courses, designed for adults returning to education for the first time. but they are also developing them as conversion programmes, to allow A-level candidates to change tack, despite an awkward choice of subjects.
