Bridgwater College has been awarded the highly influential and employer led quality mark for education and training, the Creative Skillset Tick for two of its FE Courses.

The College has been recognised for the quality of courses and relevance to employers for its Art & Design Level 3 (BTEC Extended Diploma) and OCR Cambridge Technical Level 3 Creative Media Production courses.

Tick status had previously only been awarded to undergraduate and post graduate courses across the Creative Industries, and has now been extended to a select group of Further Education (FE) courses across England for the first time.

Five courses including Bridgwater College from across the Creative Industries will receive the coveted status following a successful and rigorous assessment of each course by a panel of industry assessors.

In a crowded and complicated education environment with thousands of creative courses available and a constant search for value, the Creative Skillset Tick is a benchmark of quality and employer relevance. Courses that achieve Tick status have demonstrated to a team of industry professionals that their curriculum, teaching and assessment provide students with the very best preparation for a career in the Creative Industries.

Dave Alexander, Section Leader Art, Design and Media at Bridgwater College said,

“We were very keen to enter this exciting pilot of the Tick status at FE level and Creative Skillset made the experience a really positive one. We are delighted to have been accredited for our Media and Art & Design courses and this validates their standard at an industry and national level. Overall the process was really supportive and the team and students actually really enjoyed the visit from CS and the industry panel.”

Betty Jackson CBE, world renowned fashion designer and a Board member of Creative Skillset said,

“Tick accreditation represents excellence. Further and Higher Education is expensive and we want to provide students embarking on a career in the Creative Industries and their parents, with a powerful tool to navigate the complex education environment, and enable employers to identify the best equipped students ready for employment and further study.”

Annual monitoring of graduates from Higher Education Ticked courses by Creative Skillset found that these graduates are three times more likely to find employment in a field related to their course and the Creative Skillset’s Workforce Survey this year flagged that, in order to improve diversity,  there is a real need to provide fair access and a range of routes into the Creative Industries. Introducing the Tick into Further Education will serve to signpost the very best courses to the best talent and to the huge number of employers from across the Creative Industries that are keen to engage with young people from a wide range of backgrounds, thereby completing effective vocational pathways from school through to Higher Education and jobs.

All of the successful courses that have been awarded the Tick were very highly praised by the industry assessors for their exciting and motivating teaching and their engagement with the Creative Industries, both locally and nationally, providing an effective launch pad for their students in to some of the best Higher Education courses related to their chosen vocational path or directly in to jobs.

The Tick for FE courses in creative subjects will be open for all applications early in 2016. For further information please contact: Abby Stirling, Quality Development Manager abbys@creativeskillset.org.