By Sam Sharpe, Head of Construction and Motor Vehicle at North Hertfordshire College
At North Hertfordshire College, we’re always looking to the future to ensure we teach our students the skills they need for a future-proofed career. The curriculum development in our Construction and Motor Vehicle full-time courses, adult professional courses, and apprenticeships is a great example of this, with our programmes regularly updated to feature skills development for green technologies. This in turn helps our students prepare for a world that’s ramping up its journey to net zero carbon emissions, as well as the UK Government’s goal for Britain to be a clean energy superpower.
One of the ways we’re working towards this is by engaging with local employers to better understand the green skills future employees need – like our ElectrAssure Training Academy. Launched in 2024, the project draws on the knowledge of the local electric vehicle charging point installation company to deliver industry-relevant and high-quality training on how to install and maintain electric vehicle charging points in commercial and domestic settings.
The ElectrAssure Training Academy, based at our Engineering & Construction Campus in Stevenage, features fixed charging points and four training rigs to provide students with hands-on experience and a skilled understanding of EV charging. Students finish the programme with a recognised qualification that asserts their knowledge and skills in the sector, helping them start a valuable career. It’s thanks to the collaboration with ElectrAssure that we were able to identify skills gaps in the electric vehicles sector and provide a solution to address these economic and skills needs.
Another green technology our curriculum features is air source heat pumps. Working with Mitsubishi Electric, our heat pumps will allow us to train the engineers of the future and support them in understanding how this equipment can be used to sustainably regulate building temperatures and set performance standards.
Heat pumps are a renewable technology, acting as a low carbon heating and hot water resource for homes and businesses. With the UK government’s boiler upgrade scheme seeing further investment in heat pumps, they’re on track to become the primary source of heating in the country. This increased demand will require an increase in specially trained engineers, and North Hertfordshire College’s students will be at the forefront of this workforce in the Hertfordshire region.
Whilst the ElectrAssure Training Academy and air source heat pump technologies provide training for our higher-level students, we also give our level 2 students the opportunity to develop their green skills too.
In the 2023/24 academic year, we launched an initiative that sees our Level 2 construction students study an additional Retrofit Awareness qualification alongside their main study programme. This sustainability-driven qualification, which teaches students how to use modern construction technologies to update older systems, extends the lifespan of buildings and reduces their carbon emissions. We’re proud that North Hertfordshire College was the first college in Hertfordshire to start offering these programmes, too, positioning ourselves as a regional leader in the retrofit training space.
By providing our construction and trades learners with the technical and practical skills to install and maintain these green technologies, North Hertfordshire College is also supporting the local community to move towards clean energy. Our talent pipeline of trained professionals raises awareness of the eco-friendly energy options in our local area, highlighting the opportunity to make a sustainable switch.
This is just the start of North Hertfordshire College’s work towards the government’s mission to make the UK a green energy superpower – something the Association of College’s (AOC) has identified as requiring heavy support from further education institutions to achieve. That’s why the AOC is calling on the UK government to increase the funding allocated to colleges, so we can continue this work and take it even further.
To find out more about the AOC’s Mission Accepted campaign, please visit: https://www.aoc.co.uk/news-campaigns-parliament/mission-accepted