UN IVERSITY OF LI NCOLN
SPOTLIGHT ON TOBY WILKINSON AND THE UNIVERSITY OF LINCOLN
The power of visible pathways Q
// The Holbeach campus, which is home to the National Centre for Food Manufacturing, is integral to your social mobility drive. Could you tell us a little bit about how it evolved over the years and the strategy behind it?
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TOBY WILKINSON, DEPUTY VICE CHANCELLOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF LINCOLN, IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE INSTITUTION’S WORK WITH OUTSIDE ORGANISATIONS, INCLUDING THE SOCIAL MOBILITY PLEDGE. HERE HE UPDATES ON THE UNIVERSITY’S ONGOING WORK IN DRIVING SOCIAL MOBILITY.
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// Holbeach is very much at the centre of the UK’s food manufacturing industry. A large amount of growing and manufacturing goes on there and many of the products we find on our supermarket shelves are made there. For many years we had a small campus there engaging with the local food manufacturing in terms of skills development and education. What really crystallised that presence in the south of Lincolnshire was the formation of our multi-academy trust. Back in in 2011 there was a merger of two secondary schools and we were approached as a university to see if we would take on sponsorship of that secondary school. Because the school was right next to our National Centre for Food Manufacturing we thought it would make a lot of sense to see what synergies we could find between the university-level provision and secondary education in the area. Over the years since 2011, the trust has expanded to five schools now spanning everything from primary to secondary, and now with our campus, tertiary opportunities, apprenticeships. We’ve created an entire educational ecosystem, where children and young people from the first time that they enter full time education can see a pathway through from primary to secondary, into university level education and into jobs with local industries. We worked really closely with the local food manufacturing sector, not only at university, but also to bring their contacts into the schools to help with apprenticeships and with the vocational provision at the academies. It’s been a fantastic experience for us in how we really put Holbeach on the map in terms of the food sector. [It’s about] creating those pathways or those opportunities for young people so that they can see a way all the way through to highly skilled, highly paid employment.
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And employers have really responded to this and actually more strategically looked at how they can locate higher skilled jobs there because you’ve really developed this national centre.
