Varndean College, as part of the FE Sussex Partnership, has won the prestigious Beacon Edge Award in The Nous Group Award for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD).
FE Sussex is an innovative and collaborative consortium of seven sixth form colleges – Varndean College, BHASVIC, Bexhill College, The College of Richard Collyer, Plumpton College, Chichester College Group and the East Sussex College Group. In 2021/22, they collaborated on a DfE Skills Accelerator project to improve the green industry, technology and skills locally. This was in response to BEIS, a complement to the Local Skills Improvement Partnership and an opportunity to enrich collaboration and develop new and interesting practice. The project invested more than £7M into new learning resources, staff training, employer updating and student awareness; comprising five work-strands: Carbon Literacy, Electric Vehicles, Decarbonisation, Zero-Carbon Land Management and Hydrogen Technologies.
The Association of Colleges’ Beacon Awards celebrate the best and most innovative practice among UK colleges each year. The award supported by The Nous Group is to recognise examples of practical teaching and learning that equips young people with the skills needed in today’s global and digital economy, through a broad and balanced curriculum, high quality training, engaging real world learning and relationships between education and employers. The judging panel met a range of staff, students and governors from colleges within the partnership committed to the sustainability ethos.
Varndean College has been leading the way nationally with our Environmental Sustainability through the development of carbon literacy across our community, our local ecological partnerships and the unique areas of biodiversity on our beautiful site. We are a thriving and successful sixth form college with an excellent reputation for high outcomes, providing an inspirational student experience and adding value to all of our community. Varndean College transforms lives through exceptional education and we are proud of our dynamic culture, inclusivity and reputation as trailblazers.
Jeremy Kerswell, Chair of FE Sussex and Principal of Plumpton College said; “FE Sussex colleges have a track record of successful collaboration but this project and our work since has been about so much more. In identifying sustainability and the green agenda as the common thread across everything we did, we effectively made a commitment to each other, to our own colleges and most importantly to our learners. I’m delighted this has been recognised and even more so, that this work is very much continuing across Sussex.”
