AoC President Alison Birkinshaw discusses the importance of collaborative working to raise the profile of FE

We sat down to record a podcast with AoC President and Principal of York College Alison Birkinshaw at this year’s Association of College’s annual conference in Birmingham.

Alison chats about the importance of collaborative working across the sector and how to improve the profile and reputation of Further Education to potential learners and employers. Alison particularly focuses on the importance of local colleges and providers working together, rather than competing or being critical about each other’s services. 

We then move on to chat about the Growth Mindset principals shared by Matthew Syed earlier at the conference and how we can learn from our mistakes and make positive ‘marginal gains’ to help the sector look at new ways to improve our offering. The Great Britain cycling team famously adopted the ‘marginal gains’ principals to move from being mediocre in the World of cycling, to a cycling World powerhouse… then maybe we as the Further Education sector should take a few notes on how to emulate the GB Cycling team and become World beaters in the education World. 

Please check out Alison’s podcast below:

{https://soundcloud.com/user-544546889/alison-birkinshaw-audio}

Or find the FE News Soundcloud podcast here:

https://soundcloud.com/user-544546889/alison-birkinshaw-audio