SERC Takes Part in British Council Mentoring Project

South Eastern Regional College (SERC) has recently taken part in a successful British Council TVET (technical and vocational education and training) Employer Engagement mentoring project with four Colleges from Pakistan.  

Through a series of sessions led by SERC’s Chief Training and Contracts Officer, William Greer and Commercial Contracts Manager Elaine Flynn, the project helped the partnering colleges to develop their employer engagement strategy.  

The colleges involved were: Aman Institute of Vocational Training, Karachi;, Step Institute of Art, Design & Management, Lahore, ;Technical Training Centre, Quetta; and Govt. Advance Technical Training Centre, Peshawar. 

The sessions covered a wide range of aspects of employer engagement with the partner colleges reporting that the sessions; Securing Employer Feedback, Collaborating with Employers to design new Curriculum, Delivery of Apprenticeships and the Use of CRM System were of particular benefit to them.   

William Greer said “In each of the workshops we delivered a presentation on SERC’s methods of engaging employers and we had a Q&A session with the partners. This was mutually beneficial to SERC and the partner colleges as we all gained the knowledge of how employer engagement was carried out by colleges in the two countries.  At the end of each workshop, the partner organisations were given actions to consider and address before the next session.  They reported that they found this very helpful and, in most cases, this has enabled them to start to develop an employer engagement plan.”  The colleges are interested in working with SERC again in the future.

William said “The interaction between SERC and the partner colleges identified other areas of interest.  SERC’s Head of Learning Academy attended one of the sessions to brief the partners on SERC’s extensive CPD programme for lecturers, and this has the partnered colleges interested in future projects with SERC in the area of lecturer training.” 

Another positive result of the training that exemplifies the great work done during the programme is that one of the partner colleges, has asked SERC’s Chief Training and Contracts Officer William Greer to speak at an extensive employer engagement seminar in November. 

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