TGt Meets... Carole Kitching, New College Principal

New College has a new Principal. We recently met with Carole Kitching to get to know her a little better and talk about why the College is so important to Swindon, her plans for the future and how to make a really good college into a great college.

Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and your career before New College?

Well, I’ve always been involved in teaching in one way or another. I trained as an English teacher and I decided that I’d been to school and university but I wanted to see more of life before I went back to a school or a college. So I went to Greece for a year to teach English and absolutely fell in love with it, and through no career plan whatsoever I stayed in Greece for ten years, had my own language school teaching English. I met my husband in Greece, although he’s not Greek, he came to work for me for a year and I kept him!

We came back to England and I discovered Further Education right back in 1997. I taught at Abingdon and Witney College, I was there for a number of years doing the usual thing of working through different roles, which was good. I learnt a lot about F.E. and colleges, international marketing, teaching. I’ve been a principal for around ten years now up in the North and more recently London, and now here. I live relatively locally in West Oxfordshire with my family which is just a 40-minute drive, which is fantastic.

 

So what was it that attracted to you New College in particular?

Although I live in West Oxfordshire, in many ways New College is really my local college. My daughter studies here part-time, so I knew quite a bit about the college already, so it was very exciting to see the opportunity when it came up. I think it’s a really good college, it’s one of the best performing colleges in the country, and I think there’s a really good opportunity to take the college from where it is now – a really good college – and make it a really great college.

I think Swindon is a fantastic location, it’s a really vibrant town, there are loads of businesses here, lots of employment opportunities, but some of them are not always accessible to some of our residents, that’s where I think colleges can make a real difference. If you look at where you’d like a college to be, you’d like it to be in Swindon! There are real career opportunities for people, with career progression. It’s a bit of a cold spot for higher education so there’s the opportunity to develop a lot more of the higher education courses – in fact, we’re launching three new foundation degree courses this year. So I’m very passionate about what colleges can do to improve peoples lives, so it was a great opportunity and I was delighted to be appointed.

 

Do you have a particular focus or something you’re looking to bring to New College?

Throughout my career, I’ve had pretty extensive experience working together with employers and universities to create exciting programs that lead to careers for both young people and adults, so I want to really work on developing our education. I worked at Newcastle College and led on the process of gaining Taught Degree Awarding Powers, which means that they can award their own degrees, so you can work very closely with employers and perhaps that’s something in the future we can look at whether we might be able to do that here.

I’m very keen that we work even more closely with employers, where we can work together with employers to develop some of our curriculum that can really benefit students because they’re getting real-life experience and employers are getting the skills they need. We hear a lot about the ‘skills gap’ and for me, it means pinning down what that means locally because it means different things for different people. I’ve already written out to a large number of employers, I’m very keen to meet them all, to understand their businesses and what they want. It’s not my college, it’s their college, it's a college for the residents and employers of Swindon.

Those two strands of working with employers, apprenticeships, and career training, and clear university pathways. We’ve got a huge range of A-Levels here which I don’t think anyone can match, so I want to make sure we continue to offer those services to people. There are always exciting things going on, for example, the government have just announced free courses for adults on low incomes this year, so I hope that will bring a lot more people into the college and think about what they might do to improve their career.

 

How have your first couple of weeks been?

Brilliant! I’ve had a really great welcome from everyone here, there are quite a few people on their summer holiday but I’m hoping they’ll give me a great welcome when they come back! 

One of the things I thought about before I started was how I’d spend my first 100 days, and I’m a great believer in listening to what people have to tell you and really trying to understand the organisation properly. I think if you come in and just start making sweeping changes you can end up throwing the baby out with the bath water and this is a really good college! 

I want to do things that make it even better, not change the things make already make it fantastic. I want to talk to people inside and outside the college to really understand what we’re doing really brilliantly, what things we need to develop, what the opportunities are here for this college, in Swindon, now, and that will help me formulate a strategy to work through with colleagues and governors that will help the college over the next five to ten years to where it needs to be and that’s giving the best for students and businesses in Swindon, because they deserve the best.

 

Have there been any surprises in your first few weeks?

Well, yes and no. Which sounds like a bit of a cop-out! I’m constantly surprised by the dedication that the staff have and getting to talk to them individually about the work that they do with our students. That’s what colleges are really good at so it shouldn’t surprise me but it’s always surprising to see just how much they go the extra mile to do what’s best for our students.

 

What have been the best bits of the job so far, and the biggest challenges?

Often those two things are the same. I think the best bits are some of the opportunities the college will have going forward, and often they’ll come with some of the biggest challenges. Creating new things and driving those forward is really exciting although they are challenging too.

Our biggest challenges, like most organisations, come externally. Government funding is very tight, there are major national campaigns as funding has declined over the last five years, and we could do so much much more with just a bit more. 

 

What do you like to do when you have some rare time to yourself?

Well, I’m getting to know Swindon now, and there are lots of things for me to explore. I love walking so getting out and having a walk in one of the parks is fantastic, and of course, there’s some great walking around Swindon as well, like Cotswold Water Park and other things.

I’ve been to a couple of exhibitions in the town centre, and clearly, no visit to Swindon is complete without going to Swindon Designer Outlet!

 

What’s the most rewarding part of being a Principal?

I think without a doubt it’s seeing students being successful. Student awards evenings, they are the real highlight – if you can keep a dry eye during a student awards evening you’re a very harsh person I think! Whether people have overcome barriers or whether they’ve just achieved beyond their expectation, whether they’re going to university or on to an apprenticeship, or adults who have never succeeded getting their second chance, I think all of that stuff, that’s really the rewarding part.

I think colleges fundamentally change lives, and if you change lives then you can change communities and for me, that’s what it’s all about. The government talks a lot about social mobility and that’s what colleges do day in and day out.