Our strategic action for our curriculum reflects the College’s passion to transform futures through high-quality teaching and learning. It will build a vibrant and exciting curriculum that is distinctive, flexible, employer-led and truly responsive, which embraces opportunities and exceeds stakeholder expectations.

Creating a curriculum that surpasses the requirements of both students and employers of today and tomorrow, enabling us to achieve our vision, by:

• establishing a clear route map into education right through to meaningful employment and/or continuing education
• providing excellent, high-quality teaching and learning that exceeds expectations and aspirations
• ensuring our curriculum remains flexible and responsive to the changing needs of our partners, employers and our students
• ensuring our College ‘learning philosophy’ becomes the overarching guiding principles of the College, thereby accelerating the learning and progress made by our current and future student.

Our staff are our greatest investment and their day-to-day contributions build our unique College and enrich our community. To deliver the true potential of our College and to create a culture of ‘opportunity’ we will invest in the people who will make this happen: our staff, our students and our wider community.

We will:

• create healthy learning and working environments for our staff, enabling them to achieve their full potential
• ensure that all voices and opinions are valued, through open communication channels that empower our staff to continuously improve our College
• develop and strengthen our staff through open performance management, mentoring and coaching to enable each individual to have true accountability and ownership for their role within our College
• encourage all staff to have a thirst for knowledge that will drive innovation, equipping them with agile skills and expertise through a dedicated programme of professional development
• support the mental health and resilience of our staff and students through open communications, accessible mentors and coaches, and sector leading wellbeing support services
• promote healthy nutrition and lifestyle choices throughout our College environment, through our facilities, services and culture.

Digital technology is a fundamental part of the modern world, with business practices increasingly reliant on digital solutions, and our lives intertwined with social media, ‘smart’ technology and digitised services. This new digital reality, combined with the accelerating factor of the global pandemic have propelled us into an era where education and training will change to deliver the emerging skills that our students, staff and stakeholders require to thrive, innovate and be safe.

The digital transformation of both our work and personal lives also puts an increasing focus on digital equity. The attainment of both essential and advanced digital skills, as well as access to and familiarity with the latest technologies, are increasingly becoming highly important drivers of economic benefit and drivers of social mobility. Framed by these societal changes the digital strategic action has three overarching aims:

• to make people’s lives better
• to keep us safe and better connected
• to drive innovation and productivity.

The strategic action – finance will support the creation of our College vision, ensuring financial resilience for security and driving growth and innovation for the future. A ‘good’ financial health score provides a solid baseline to move forwards from.

Strategic action – finance will:

• lead the process for identification of new and diversified income streams through funding opportunities, projects and partnerships
• ensure better distribution of current income streams
• report and drive a collective understanding of financial metrics required to facilitate delivery of the other strategic actions
• lead and define system developments for reporting structures that give us the metrics and information that we need to measure the progress we are making with our strategic actions create a sustainable financial future by generating a net surplus on activities.

Our financial culture will be defined as a net surplus management culture = surplus cash for investment.

Addressing the evolving social and economic landscape, the College aims to equip our community with essential skills for both current and future work. Furthermore, we wish to empower individuals to take charge of their health and wellbeing through collaborative social prescribing initiatives and diverse community programmes. Building key partnerships with stakeholders will also highlight the importance of physical activity and wellbeing across our city.

We will focus on:

• preparing a proficient pipeline of students to respond to the needs of stakeholders and to aid recovery and sustainability of the wider sector
• providing effective use of relevant funding streams to skill and upskill the health and active wellbeing sector workforce
• promoting health and wellbeing throughout our community through a curriculum that allows the community to understand health, nutrition and fitness, as well as cultivating themselves within the health and active wellbeing sectors.

City College Plymouth has firmly positioned itself as the anchor institution for skills across the maritime, defence, manufacturing and construction sectors. By making the most of its innovative facilities, highly qualified and experienced staff, and strong industry links, the College provides the essential skills needed both today and for the future.

The College is committed not only to developing the skills our engineers and mechanics need to keep our transport running on roads and at sea, but also to ensuring that the infrastructure and adaptive technologies required to power these vehicles and vessels stay at the cutting-edge of the region’s capabilities.

Being agile, demand-driven, and innovative is key to the success of this strategic action. We will continue to enhance our understanding of digital technologies and how they can be deployed to deliver high-quality teaching experiences, resulting in better outcomes for organisations of all sizes and sectors

Developed to advance the College’s strategic vision and priorities, the strategic action – estates and assets shapes what and how we will build and how we use our physical spaces and infrastructure. The capital estate planning process is not strictly linear, as some activities overlap, rely and impact on other developing strategic drivers. This strategic action will both drive and respond to key developments in our curriculum, financial position and sector and city opportunities, building on our vision of being the ‘learning destination of choice’.

Our strategy will be defined and progressed through:

• development of an estate masterplan
• proactive response to local, regional and national opportunities that leverage funding into our capital programme
• strong relationships with employers, Plymouth City Council, funding agencies, etc
• increasing the digital and physical estate to pioneer accessibility, inclusion and social mobility.