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McGivern feels strongly that college leaders need to be
embedded locally and nationally. As with other colleges in
the devolved nations of the UK, Belfast Metropolitan College
sits within a managed rather than a marketised strategy for
upgrading skills. The six colleges in Northern Ireland each have
identified hubs to develop centres of excellence, coordinated
through the Department of the Economy. Belfast Met has two:
ICT and hospitality. These are part of a dynamic political process
to rejuvenate a community, a Belfast plan that takes education
and inclusion as its very starting point.
In a similar vein, Guy Lacey speaks of a 'duty of care' to offer
regional leadership. Newport, for example, is an asylum dispersal
area, creating zones of pronounced deprivation populated
by highly vulnerable people. He feels the Coleg Gwent has a
responsibility for providing them with a sustainable future. The
college has to balance provision between the needs of inclusion
and supporting high-tech regeneration. Over 20,000 students
are distributed over the five college sites. Of these, those most in
need of support, students at levels 1 and 2, are the least mobile.
The college strategy is that, as students' progress to levels 3,
4 and 5, provision becomes more specialised. In this scattered
region, it is important to reassure parents that the college has
local roots and a common entitlement for all. This is expressed
in a college prospectus that focuses on entitlement (including
learning in Welsh). It has an identifiable mantra which reinforces
the message, 'study near, go far'. The college's students are joining
an escalator that gives them access to both the occupations
that sustain regional society such as public services, health,
care, retail, and to the emergent new high-skills employment
that will re-develop the local economy, such as working in
semiconductors, aerospace, and an interesting, expanding niche
in cyber security. Lacey has a strong understanding of a regional
system, the traditional merging with innovation. He senses a new
civic pride in Newport, which was having a good FA Cup run at
the time of our interview. Realising the importance of the college
in sustaining the regional economy by local politicians and their