David Hilliard accompanied three of our apprentices - Matt Nobes, Rebecca Gibbons and Liam Boddy - to the University of Milton Keynes (UCMK) recently, to meet David Willetts (Higher Education spokesperson for the Conservative Party) and the two Conservative candidates for the Milton Keynes Constituencies, Mark Lancaster and Iain Stewart.  Mr Willetts is working to aid the future funding of UCMK and support their aspirations to establish a full university here in the city. 

Railcare was invited to the event as a partner with MK Voluntary Sector and MK Business Leaders Partnership. UCMK believe all three organisations are at the heart of working innovatively to meet the needs of the future economy, locally, regionally and nationally, as well as being able to deliver a wide spectrum of opportunity into the local community.

The theme of the event was that UCMK's success depends on building a broad community of excellence in all sectors, right across the city through a distributed learning model.  UCMK and Railcare share a keen interest in bringing top-end skills to the city and have collaborated on a number of initiatives that support the local community (e.g. Wolverton Unlimited), and are working together with others in the city to create a National Centre of Engineering Excellence.  This will build on the traditional skills of one of the oldest areas of the city, and celebrate a long association with the railway industry.

It is hoped that it may also drive the regeneration of a key area of the city.

Railcare were happy to reinforce the need to collaborate in order to "deliver the skills needed for the future". It is a belief that we support through the "work and study" route that Railcare apprentices take to gaining qualifications, which enables both Railcare and the apprentices to put newly-acquired, up-to-the-minute learning straight into a working context situation.