Darlington College has had a number of success stories with its industry placement scheme this year, and to celebrate Love our Colleges week we wanted to highlight Sam Norris’s placement at Resilient Business Systems (RBS). This was a standout example of what can be achieved when education and business work collaboratively.
RBS, which was founded by Andrew Read and his wife Michelle, provide IT and cyber security support to businesses both regionally and nationally. Andrew and Michelle have always been keen to bring in and develop new talent within their company, and the industry placements were a fantastic opportunity for them to do this.
“We are strongly aware that there is a lack of IT technicians out there and felt that working with Darlington College would be an ideal opportunity to encourage more young people into the industry.” Michelle went on further to say: “Myself and Andy presented to the level 3 IT classes last year and decided to take on two students for a couple of afternoons a week. Fast forward almost a year and the scheme has been a great success for us, even with the pandemic causing us some issues. Sam showed so much promise that we ended up bringing him onboard to the business as an apprentice in August, in collaboration with the college.”
Sam is now on a Level 3 Infrastructure Technician Apprenticeship with RBS and in class one day a week. He is already becoming a valuable member of the team and would encourage all students to give the industry placements some real thought: “These placements teach you skills that are transferable to lots of jobs. It’s been a great way for me to get my foot in the door and begin my career in the IT industry. The placement really helped me reinforce my knowledge by using real world examples and I regularly applied that to my coursework.”
Due to the success of industry placements such as Sam’s and others, the college has been selected to run a new qualification called a T level in 2022. The qualification will cover the Digital, Education, Health & Science, Business and Engineering sectors, providing students the skills needed for a successful start to their careers in these industries.
Darlington College would like to take this opportunity to thank Resilient Business Systems for their ongoing support of the industry placements and apprenticeship schemes. It’s great to see one of our students making an excellent start to his career and we wish him every success for the future.
For those looking for more information on industry placements and apprenticeships, please visit our website https://darlington.ac.uk/employer-portal/
