Metro Mayor Dan Norris met health and construction students at Weston College at the official national Launch of the UK’s twelve “Institutes of Technologies”.
Weston College is the lead college for the West of England Institute of Technology in partnership with UWE Bristol, and local employers including Airbus, the NHS and the National Composites Centre.
Mayor Norris was shown the college’s new simulation ward where students train on state of the art, life-like dummy patients which breathe, blink and groan. The Mayor spoke to students and then got hands on performing CPR on a training dummy. He was then shown their construction facilities.
Over the next three years the Institute of Technology plans to train over 2,000 local people with 70% of them working as apprentices in local firms.
Dan Norris said: “I’m delighted to visit the brilliant facilities at Weston College – the injuries on those patient dummies were worryingly lifelike, and I was fascinated to meet some of the people training to go into the building trade, the sights and sounds brought back a lot of memories for me from the days I was a scaffolder’s assistant. The young people I met were really enthusiastic and motivated and they know exactly what skills they need and were telling me about the fulltime jobs they know they can get at the end of their studies.”
Dr Paul Phillips CBE, Principal and Chief Executive at Weston College, said: “We were delighted to welcome Dan to the College to meet our learners and to hear first-hand about their experiences and future career aspirations. His interaction with learners was superb and it gave us all a boost. It was great to meet somebody genuinely interested in what we do and our learners.”
