SERC Engineering Team in Shortlist for Gold Teaching Award

The Engineering Education team at South Eastern Regional College (SERC) are in the running for a coveted Pearson Gold Teaching Award. Winners will be revealed on the BBC’s The One Show from 25 – 29 November, ahead of a prestigious Awards ceremony which will take place in London on 30th November to celebrate 102 deserving teachers, lecturers, leaders, support staff and institutions from across the UK.

The SERC team were presented with a Pearson Silver Award for Further Education (FE) Team of the Year 2024 earlier this year, which recognised the 30-strong team of full-time and part-time lecturing and support staff who bring industry specific qualifications and experience to over 1,000 engineering and manufacturing students across SERC. 

The Silver Award, which secured their shortlist for a Gold Award, highlighted their dynamic approaches to transforming education and the industry, through implementation of several programmes to enhance students’ education experience and to address key national and local industry workforce gaps.  Since 2021, the We Can Engineer It initiative has engaged with women and girls to promote engineering as a career choice; members of the team have volunteered as STEM Ambassadors to help young people, especially females, excel in the industry; and the female lecturers have supported the Career Ready post-16 programme by mentoring female engineers.  

The Team has established an Employers Forum to ensure students are ‘work ready’ for the industry; helped develop the Project STEM units shared with the Manufacturing & Engineering Growth and Advancement (MEGA) network of businesses; and Thales UK has invested in an engineering skills academy to train 15 higher-level apprentices, five of which are studying at SERC.

Developing strategies for learner engagements, the team ensures that SERC students are exposed to project-based learning (PBL), practical scenarios and engagement with the wider engineering community via competition entry.  Classes consist of regular guest speakers, live projects and mentoring students in setting up the student-led SERC Engineering Society. They connect with the local community and industry to promote engineering to hard-to-reach communities.

Their industry networks include a 10-year international partnership with the National Institute of Technology in Toyama College, Japan, which enabled exploratory visits that exposed SERC students to the robotics industry.

The College is no stranger to Pearson Awards. The Engineering Team’s Silver Pearson National Teaching Award for Further Education Team of the Year (2024) is the third for SERC since 2019, when the Science team won the award, followed by the College’s Enterprise, Entrepreneurship and Environment team (2023).  The College’s Little SERC creche team won a Silver Early Years Team of the Year Award in 2023 and the Culinary Arts and Hospitality  team were Awarded Bronze for FE Team of the Year (2024). In addition, since 2021, individual lecturers have achieved Silver Awards for FE Lecturer of the Year: Paul Mercer (2021) and Aine McGreeghan (2023); and Stefanie Campbell (2021), won a Gold National Teaching Award for Digital Innovator of the Year. Lizzie Buick, former Deputy Head of Enterprise and Entrepreneurship team, was Highly Commended in the FE Lecturer of the Year category (2024).