This category aims to recognise and celebrate successful business partnerships, where organisations have collaborated on a project with successful outcomes for those involved.

West Nottinghamshire College serves Mansfield, Ashfield and surrounding areas. Around 3000 16-18 year olds, 1000 apprentices and 5000 adults study on a wide range of courses.

NTU is one of the UK’s most successful universities and recruits more UK based undergraduates than any other university. NTU was awarded The Times and The Sunday Times Modern University of the Year 2023 and ranked second best university in the UK in the Uni Compare Top 100 rankings (2021/2022). NTU is a major provider of business support in the local economy from ‘start-up to scale-up’ and has supported 1,700 local SME’s in the past three years.

As part of this collaboration, VWNC has provided NTU with a base in Mansfield NTU from which it can project the entirety of its offer across local communities.

The collaboration is built upon a shared set of 12 principles and is aimed at bringing the strengths of each partner for student benefit but also to support the businesses and communities of Mansfield and Ashfield.

The two partners are committed to developing a curriculum offer from level 2 to level 7 in Mansfield that will help local employers across a wide range of sectors to address their skills needs. Level 2 to Level 7 cover GCSE and NVQ’s all the way up to Postgraduate study.

NTU received accreditation to create nursing courses on the Mansfield site, and since 2021 almost 200 students have enrolled on nursing programmes.

The partnership has enabled multiple pathways students can take from VWNC into NTU, such as the nursing and teaching. Both parties are working closely with nearby hospital Kings Mill, primary schools, and the wider business community to enable people to study and work locally.

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