Find out what our partners have to say about us.
"We view New College Lanarkshire as a beacon of good practice, championing student and staff mobility and transnational partnerships through its work in ERASMUS+. The team supporting the ERASMUS+ work does so with vision, passion, technical rigour and a strong commitment to quality.
"Staff and students share compelling stories of the personal impact that mobility or transnational project work has on them. Strategically, the added value to the college is clear and there are important synergies with international and other business development activity.
"The award of an Erasmus+ VET charter offers testimony to the scale and quality of the mobility places offered and the genuine partnerships existing between the college and its hosting partner colleges and businesses. The college is highly respected and is regularly approached to share its experience with others in the UK and abroad.
"Attracting and retaining the funding to operate at this level takes expertise, tenacity and singular attention to detail. These characteristics run though all of the external funding activities, each reinforcing the strength and success of the other.
Lorraine Irvine, Project Manager, Colleges Partnership
New College Lanarkshire: building a culture of collaboration
As the first college in Scotland to offer international mobility opportunities to vocational students, New College Lanarkshire has built up a strong and varied internationalisation programme to support the development of learners and staff and build a mutually beneficial global network.
With 1,100 staff and 25,000 learners, New College Lanarkshire is the fifth largest further education college in Scotland, serving both urban centres and rural hinterlands. Many of these communities are extremely disadvantaged, and the percentage of unemployed school leavers is amongst the highest rates in Scotland. A large proportion of the student population also face complex barriers to participation in training and employment, including financial difficulties and a lack of formal qualifications, and many have never travelled outside of the UK.
Widening Participation in UK Outward Student Mobility Report (December 2017)
Students who spend some time abroad working, studying or volunteering achieve better degrees and get better jobs, and the number of students going abroad is rising each year. However, not all students in the UK participate in outward mobility at the same rate.
Universities UK International (UUKi) received support from the Erasmus+ programme, through its Higher Education Key Action 3 strand, to run a project focussed on widening participation in outward mobility. The Go International programme has worked with universities and colleges across the UK to deliver this project, signalling the strong commitment to mobility from UK institutions.
"It has been great to work with New College Lanarkshire on the 'Widening Participation in UK Outward Student Mobility Project'. The College provides one of the largest mobility programmes in the UK further education sector, and their participation in the Erasmus+ programme has enabled the College to further increase the number of students and staff participating in mobility.
"We are grateful to the College for sharing their expertise in delivering outward student mobility with colleagues across the further and higher education sector, by providing a case study for our toolkit and speaking at our annual conference."
Katherine Allinson, Policy Researcher, Universities UK International
