Scarborough TEC celebrates the start of Colleges Week 2020 with York & North Yorkshire Local Enterprise Partnership

Business & Enterprise students at Scarborough TEC have celebrated the start of Colleges Week 2020 with an insight into the York & North Yorkshire Local Enterprise Partnership’s new strategy ‘Re-shaping our Economy to be Greener, Fairer and Stronger’, launching this week.

The Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) has devised the strategy as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic and the Level 2 & 3 students met virtually with the York & North Yorkshire Local Enterprise Partnership’s Head of Strategy, Andrew Leeming, to discuss the strategy and the plan’s the LEP has to improve the economy in the coming years.

Andrew Leeming said: “Our colleges are critical in helping to reshape our economy post Covid 19. The need for more training, upskilling and reskilling in the future will be so important and having great colleges will help us meet this demand.

“Our young people face a difficult time at the moment but with high-quality learning at great Colleges they will be better placed to face these challenges head on and have a great future”

Colleges like Scarborough TEC play a key part in doing this. The theme of Colleges Week is building communities, boosting businesses, and supporting people to get the training they need for the jobs of the future, serving local business and community needs.

The event at Scarborough TEC is part of the third annual Colleges Week which takes place from 19^th–23^rd October, with hundreds of events expected to take place across England.

Dawid Korpalski, 18, a Level 3 Business & Enterprise student at Scarborough, said: “It was interesting to be able to pick up the LEP’s plans for the future and to find out more about support that is going to be available for young people.

“Colleges are important because they give young people the skills you need to succeed.  English isn’t my first language so, not only am I learning about Business, they have also helped me to improve my English.”

Katie Weighell, 18, a fellow Level 3 Business & Enterprise student, added: “I travel to Scarborough every day from Harome and without Colleges like Scarborough TEC young people would feel isolated.  They help us to socialise and offer us opportunities we wouldn’t have otherwise.”