INTERVIEW

Changing tack INTERVIEW

A few months ago, the main focus for Amanda Melton was the introduction of T Levels and helping to shape the future of the further education sector. The emergence of coronavirus ushered in a very different set of priorities

t’s a Friday morning when I speak to Amanda Melton, principal and chief executive of Nelson and Colne College Group in Lancashire. It should have been the end of the fi rst week back at college after the Easter break, but instead she is in her garden. It’s a slightly surreal scenario, but not much is normal in the further education (FE) world just now.

Despite the somewhat unusual circumstances though, Melton has been pleasantly surprised by how well the college has coped with the challenges of Covid-19. “Like most colleges, we turned on a sixpence when lockdown happened, and we were able to become an online college in a very short space of time,” she says. “We had an extra staff development day on that last Friday to get everyone online, which was just in time. We’re coping pretty well but now, like everyone, we’re trying to see how we can sustain the initial momentum.” Initially, her biggest concern was whether the IT would cope with staff and students needing to access systems remotely, after a diffi cult experience trying to get the college onto a single domain after its merger with Accrington and Rossendale College two years ago. “But our IT staff did a magnifi cent job of getting everything going, and within seven days we had no staff on the college premises at all,” she says.

“The whole college is on Microsoft Teams, which we’re using for document sharing, board meetings and project management, and students are using Google Classroom. It’s been the burning platform that we needed, and even personally I have overcome my reticence to change my ways of working, which others are benefi ting from.”

It’s not just the IT to which Melton has had to adapt. “I’m quite an outwardfacing principal – on many occasions I’ve called myself head of sales – and my key strength is in building relationships, negotiating and infl uencing,” she says. “This is a completely diff erent kind of leadership and I have had to redesign my own job description because in this time of crisis, both inside the college and I

outside, it’s more about trying to support colleagues, students and other partners and stakeholders in a compassionate and emotional, as well as a practical, way. But I feel more connected to my staff than I have in a very long time as a result.”

She’s worried it will sound crass to talk about any positives that might emerge from the current situation, but fi rmly believes the new skills everyone has had to learn could come in handy in future. “We’re thinking about our reopening plan, and teaching students when they’re not in the college needs to be part of that, not just from a pragmatic point of view but because it will enhance students’ preparedness for what they do next,” she says. “We all need to develop our independent thinking and learning

LIKE MOST COLLEGES, WE TURNED ON A SIXPENCE WHEN LOCKDOWN HAPPENED. WITHIN SEVEN DAYS WE HAD NO STAFF ON THE PREMISES

skills.” The college needs to be prepared for only partial returns of students and future temporary lockdowns, she says, adding that knowing staff and students can work remotely could even help with construction projects in future.

Distance learning, of course, was not what Melton envisaged dominating her agenda at this point. Like many others, the college will start off ering T Levels from September, and Melton herself has been a fi rm advocate. “The central intent for colleges is to get young people ready for what they do when they leave, not to give them a qualifi cation,” she says. “For me, the T Level conversation is about how to take your vocational education system to a place where it is more closely aligned to getting young people into valuable jobs where they will continue to learn on the job for a long time. I’ve been a massive advocate of T Levels from the outset.”

Melton’s hope is that the new system can form part of a wider framework in which employers and colleges can work closer together. “It’s important that we don’t get too hung up on making colleges do what employers want because employers have a habit of changing their minds,” she says. “We need employer engagement to contribute to the development of curriculum but it needs to become part of the personality of colleges to be in that space, and in the best colleges that’s already the case.”

Teaching journey

Melton’s own route to running a college was a circuitous one. Having studied a modern languages degree and worked in sales for a software fi rm, she was introduced to the world of FE when she had her hair cut at her local college. “I had two young children and was working as a freelance IT consultant, and I applied to my local college, which was South Traff ord College at the time, to see if they wanted someone to teach French and Italian,” she says. “They came back to me and said they did but they also needed someone to teach IT and business, and before I knew it I was working virtually full-time.”

She would remain there for 16 years, rising to assistant principal by the time she moved to Nelson and Colne in 2012. “When I got to Nelson, to my pleasure, and also slight concern, I found that it was an amazingly good college, and I was worried about how I could possibly improve it,” she says. “But the college and I have grown together and it’s now a spectacularly successful college. The people who work and learn there are part of a very happy family who are keen to learn. Our purpose architecture is built around the idea that ‘we exist to create the extraordinary’. We want extraordinary outcomes for our students and for them to have extraordinary success in their lives, and we want

our teaching staff to enjoy being extraordinary teachers.”

Nelson and Colne, though, is not her only focus. She’s also a trustee of the Pendle Education Trust, a multi-academy trust chain sponsored by the college. “We set it up when I had been at the college for only a few days as a result of a local primary school which was in signifi cant diffi culty having got an Ofsted grade 4, and a secondary school that was in the same position,” she recalls. “We were able to use some of the capacity for improvement which existed in the college, largely connected to leadership, to transform the prospects of those schools. There are fi ve schools in the trust; one is still struggling to improve but we are all over it, and the other four have been transformed from being grade 4 schools to at least grade 2, and one will be knocking on the door of outstanding this year.”

She also serves as a director for skills and technical education on the Lancashire Enterprise Partnership, and chairs its Skills Advisory Panel, which works closely with enterprise co-ordinators to provide school and college students with a career plan and links to local employers. For her, such extracurricular activity is just part of the job. “I completely respect those leaders whose job it is to make improvements in the educational experience of learners but that is not my job,” she says. “I have employed great leaders in my college who are much

VITAL INFO

FAVOURITE FOOD

Barbecue

FAVOURITE DRINK

Gavi and ice

FAVOURITE HOLIDAY SPOT

Cornish coast– sunny obviously

FAVOURITE TV SHOW

Fleabag

DOGS OR CATS?

Dogs every time

better at that than I am. What I am good at is getting out there and working with partners and stakeholders from across the employment and public sector to improve the prospects for our businesses and individuals across the region. That’s what gets me up in the morning.”

Guiding lights

Melton admits she’s been fortunate to benefi t from the mentorship of others, particularly Sir Bill Moorcroft at Traff ord College, and Sir Frank McLoughlin, Associate Director of Leadership at the Education and Training Foundation (ETF), who she has worked closely with on both the Independent Commission on the College of the Future programme and as part of the steering group for the ETF’s leadership development programme.

The College of the Future initiative, which started in March 2019, is just the kind of big-picture thinking on which Melton thrives. “It’s right up my street to think about what FE might look like in colleges across the four nations in 10 years’ time, and I’m the English principal who sits on that,” she says. “One of the speeches I used quite regularly is that if you look at the issues that are ahead of us as a nation – and at that time it was about Brexit and potentially losing skills and local pockets where you need to level up – then the obvious answer to that is the college sector.

“Colleges exist in almost every town, they understand local and regional needs, they have very strong relationships with stakeholders – employers, community stakeholders and local authorities – and they have the capacity to adapt quickly. Why not think about how to use that sector to solve the question of productivity and skills in the future?”

Leadership development is another theme close to her heart. “The job of leader in an FE college is very challenging, in part because no two colleges are the same,” she says. “One of the great benefi ts of further education is the fact that it is responsive to the needs of the area in which it’s located. But that does mean it’s diffi cult to prepare leaders to be able to work in such a diverse range of institutions. We need to make access to that senior leader role, or tier 1 or 2 jobs, easier by having a clearer purpose and national direction of travel for FE colleges and a more robust investment in staffi ng.”

There are early signs this is starting to happen, she says – grounds for optimism perhaps in what remains an unsettling landscape. “I’m encouraged by the more recent noises coming out of government about the importance of the role that FE colleges have to play in the future of the workforce nationally,” she says. “As a nation, we need to embrace adult lifelong learning to make sure that everyone can contribute to the economic security of the country, particularly post-coronavirus. FE colleges should be at the heart of that.”