Principal & CEO Kurt Hintz reflects on the last six months at HSDC College Group, including the return to our original college names, new construction and digital provision, and around £7 million of investment in our facilities. This video was filmed in our Nursing T Level suite at South Downs College.
Content Summary
Kurt Hintz, Principal and CEO at HSDC College Group, explains that the group has returned to the original names of its colleges, each with a clear focus. South Downs College is a technical college with industry standard facilities, Havant Sixth Form College offers academic A Levels as a route to university, and Alton College provides a full tertiary offer for local people, including A Levels, technical qualifications and SEND provision. Over the last six months, provision has widened to include construction and digital apprenticeships, including AI, so students gain skills for jobs in the region. Around £7 million of capital investment has also gone into keeping facilities at industry standard.
This is a simplified summary, please watch the full video for further information.
Watch the video below:
Transcript:
We’ve been getting up to a lot in the last six months. You might have seen that we’ve gone back to the original names of the colleges.
I’m sitting here right in the middle of South Downs College, in our Nursing T Level suite. It’s a fantastic, realistic environment for training our students, and this is what you find at South Downs College. It’s a technical college and we’ve really gone back to our roots on that. When you come to this college, you’ll find industry standard facilities in all of the different areas that we deliver.
We’ve widened the things that we deliver into construction. Construction programmes and construction jobs are one of those things that the sector desperately needs.
One of our other colleges is Havant Sixth Form College. Havant Sixth Form College is all about academic excellence with A Levels. If you go to Havant Sixth Form College, you’re going to be going to university. That’s your route. That’s what it offers: a very full range of A Level provision that is ideally set for you to go into university. That’s what it’s all about.
Alton College is all about local, regional provision for local people. That’s exactly what it offers: a full tertiary education offer, with its A Level provision, its technical qualifications and the wider participation offer for those who are starting at different levels and lower levels, as well as the SEND provision there.
One of the other things that we’ve been concentrating on in the last six months is making sure that we offer the skills and qualifications for people to go into the jobs which are out there in the region, looking at those jobs and what sort of jobs are on offer. We’ve widened our provision to things like construction at South Downs College, and widened the apprenticeship offer, offering digital apprenticeships as well as the full suite of apprenticeships that we offer here at the college. That makes sure people are ready for the industries that they’re going into. One of those apprenticeships is in digital, especially around AI, as you might expect, offering people the qualifications that get them ready for the jobs that are out there.
In the last six months, we’ve been doing a lot of work around our college sites as well. We’ve been putting around £7 million into capital expenditure. That’s all the equipment and facilities to make sure that all of our facilities, just like this one, are kept at industry standard, so that when our students go out into employment, they’ve used equipment that exactly mirrors what they’ll be using in the industries that they go into. They’re professionally ready and competent for those jobs.
Alton College Havant Sixth Form College HSDC College Group Leadership South Downs College Staff