Kendal College Principal Kelvin Nash on Kendal's future

It may not be the most beautiful outlook from a workplace in Cumbria, but the construction site, diggers, and dots of dayglo workmen are a vivid reminder of how many new developments are under way at Kendal College.

The busy scene is the site of its new £4m construction and engineering building, tipped for completion by September this year and set to host new T-level training programmes designed to prepare people for work in the sector. The build will be in addition to the recently installed hybrid and electrical automotive workshops, a T-level health care hub and state-of-the-art industry standard kitchens.

Kendal College delivers a wide array of education, covering everything from A-levels and apprenticeships, vocational subjects such as sport and outdoor adventure, hair and beauty, hospitality, health and social care, computing, business, and arts. It also runs Kendal Museum, The Box theatre and Wildman Art Gallery and has within its estate the Castle Dairy, one of the oldest buildings in Kendal.

However, the new T-level construction and engineering build is just one of a number of plans for growth that are becoming a reality for the college, each with implications for business in Kendal and Cumbria.

Employability and preparing students for work runs through almost everything the college does, whether it is training and upskilling for adult learners, or post-16 education for school leavers through college based programmes and apprenticeships.

As such it has forged links with a wide sweep of the county’s businesses. It has also built a reputation for high quality education, topping the FE Week’s league tables in 2019 to be named the most successful college in the country.

"What we always say to our students is that you can never be quite sure who you're sat next to in the cafeteria, because it genuinely could be the CEO of a company who may interview you for a job in two years' time,” Kelvin says.

As a child, Kelvin, who grew up in Aberdare in the Welsh valleys, had ambitions to be either a teacher or a policeman.

"I've always been a bit of a people person really," he says. "I think both my career ambitions come from the desire to help people.”

After sampling the police route as a special constable, he plumped for education, moving to England to do his teacher training and has remained engaged in education for over 20 years.

He began his career teaching business and economics at Dudley College, with jobs following in Bournemouth, Stamford, Bolton, Grantham, Worcester and finally Kendal.

“I am doing a UK tour,” says Kelvin.

“When I applied for the principal’s post at Kendal, the job advert said, ‘Let the Adventure begin’, and it has been quite the adventure, as well as being a great place to work, with superb staff and students, Kendal College is making a real positive difference to people’s lives.”

Kelvin, who recently turned 50 and lives near Kirkby Stephen, is currently spending his spare time doing a Land’s End to John O’Groats virtual run, as well as ticking off Wainwrights although, he says, at a very leisurely pace.

On moving to Kendal, he says he was initially surprised at the extent to which its staff and students are prepared to travel to get to the college

"Aside from students being from all over Cumbria, we have students who come from north of Carlisle”, he says.

"We also have students that come from the Yorkshire borders, Lancaster and Morecambe. We did a bit of research last year and our furthest south student was from St Helens, near Liverpool."

Kelvin says although Kendal is a smaller college than Worcester - where he was previously vice principal – he has been impressed by its reach, collaborating with other further education colleges across the county and working with employers and organisations such as Cumbria Chamber of Commerce and the Local Enterprise Partnership to develop professional and workplace skills.

He represents the college on various groups across Cumbria, including the South Lakes Federation, Hello Futures Executive Committee, Strategic Thinking Economic Renewal Group, and the Kendal Futures Board, as well as being chair of the Cumbria Careers hub, representing over 50 schools and colleges in the county, with the aim to improve the employability of Cumbria’s young people.

"Employers have always been important," he says.

"Whether it’s employers supporting our young people through work experience, involvement in the design of courses or where we work with them on upskilling their workforce. Over the last few years, it's really heightened in its importance.”

A large factor in the Ofsted inspection of colleges is how they meet the needs of local employers with courses that have a genuine impact on the community.

“That's where we work with the three other colleges in Cumbria, Lakes, Carlisle and Furness, to collectively plan and deliver those skills for the county,” says Kelvin.

Post-Covid the college is working with Cumbria Chamber of Commerce to develop its Local Skills Improvement Plan and with the other colleges in Cumbria on a countywide Skills Accelerator Programme. These are intended to identify the changing needs of the county, for example the well-publicised struggle to find staff in the hospitality sector and provision of land-based education following the closure of Newton Rigg College.

The college is currently working with outdoor education organisation the Ernest Cook Trust to offer land-based studies on the Lowther Estate, near Penrith, as well as collaborating with local farmers and landowners to develop its range of land based courses and apprenticeships.

"We've got over 100 apprenticeships at the moment on various different land-based programmes," says Kelvin.

"It’s a growing sector and something that we are looking to expand because the farming community are telling us that they want provision in Cumbria and they're supporting us as the local college in providing that for them.

"We don't need to own a farm or land or machinery, because they're very happy for us to go and use their facilities. That's the innovative bit, that brings the cost base down, making the course economical to run which allows us to really help fill that gap."

Kelvin has also overseen a plan for Kendal College to purchase the first and second floors of the town’s Westmorland Shopping Centre. This will create a third site for the college in addition to its campus on Milnthorpe Road and its Arts and Media Campus on Beezon Road.

"Go back 20 years, we had about 400 full-time students on the Milnthorpe Road site," says Kelvin.

"But if you fast forward to today, we have over 4,500 students at the college at any given time across the year. We've got to a stage where we haven't got spare capacity. To meet this growth we've reconfigured, we've extended, we've done everything we can to accommodate and resource students.”

After looking at the possibility of extending into other sites - including the former Beales department store - the college began the process of purchasing the floors at the shopping centre. Kelvin hopes about 400 students will begin using the site in September at the beginning of the next academic year.

"At the moment what's planned to go down there is our faculty of professional and academic studies which comprises a mix of adults and 16 to 18-year-olds," he says.

"The centre will accommodate our A-level provision, our business students, and potentially our access programmes which are aimed at our adult learners who are looking to get into higher education. There is also the chance to expand our arts programmes at the Westmorland, and we’re particularly looking at digital, games design and media.”

Retail businesses which currently occupy the first floor will be offered new units on the level below.

It is hoped the move will bolster the shopping centre, which had been experiencing dropping occupancy levels, as well as increasing footfall and helping the local economy by boosting business for surrounding retailers, cafes, and restaurants.

"Part of our plan for the Westmorland site is the creation of an apprenticeship hub and incubation centre for employers, so that we can work more closely with them on curriculum design," says Kelvin.

He says any employers who are searching for specific skills should contact their local college to begin working with them to identify the need and in turn create the right kind of provision.

This is already a major theme in both apprenticeships and T-level qualifications, with the content and standards designed by employers specifically to fulfil their needs.

"Whilst we work with some of Cumbria’s largest employers, the majority of Cumbria’s business sector is made up of SMEs, and as such the employers that we mostly work with are small and medium enterprises," says Kelvin.

"A lot of the work that we do is currently bespoke to them. We have a team of work based facilitators that will go out there, conducting a workplace training needs analysis and then advising businesses accordingly in terms of what kind of skills development programmes they may need.”

He says as the further education landscape becomes ever more crowded and complex, it is important to remember some core principles of being a principal.

"The mainstay of all of it, of my job, is our staff and the students,” he says.

“The more you move into management, the further you move away from learners in some ways, because you're teaching dwindles.

“But where I don't directly teach as much as I used to in the past, my actions still have an impact on the learning and the learners. When I make any decision, whether that’s allocating a resource and money to a project, choosing to run a set curriculum, or whether I choose to invest in a new building; you still have an impact on learning but in different ways. "