John Bingham: The key to any qualification is that it adds to the value of a student's life

Published: 03 May 2007

The foundation degrees featured in this supplement, as well as being qualifications in their own right, provide a track to the third year of an honours degree. But they are just one platform on a busy station - there are many other routes leading to higher education.

I am Chairman of Governors at a successful sixth-form college in South Yorkshire that teaches 1,400 16-to-19-year-olds and specialises in A-level or equivalent qualifications (but also serves adult business and leisure learners). Hundreds of Thomas Rotherham students leave for university every year, some of whom are bound for Oxbridge. While we certainly need to encourage the academic high-fliers we also cater for a very much wider range of ambitions and abilities and, for some, university is neither a realistic nor suitable pathway.

To a certain extent this is why the Government's target for 50 per cent of young people entering higher education is an irrelevance. At the heart of everything colleges do is not a number or a target but a student. We want to make sure that young people are not forced into being something that they can't or don't want to be. What's really important is that people leave with more knowledge than they came in with; that we have added value to their lives. That value extends beyond the individual; when someone is able to realise their full potential (consistent with their abilities) in their particular field, then society and the economy benefit too.

At Thomas Rotherham we interview all prospective students during the year before enrolment to make sure they are applying to take the right subjects for their career ambitions and hence the right course (and if they want to do something in which another college or school specialises - say construction engineering at Rotherham College of Arts and Technology - then we refer them on). Early evidence shows that far fewer students are changing course after four or six weeks.

Doing your best for the student doesn't stop at the classroom door. The ethos of many colleges, where students are treated as young adults, is intended to foster independence and self-reliance and to improve self-confidence and self-esteem. Gone are uniforms and formality. College councils or unions make sure the student voice is heard; they provide a dais for organising the social and sporting events that bring enrichment to the college experience.

In researching his recent book on British culture and identity, Welcome To Everytown, Julian Baggini spent six months living in Rotherham because the town is, statistically, a microcosm of England. I think it's fair to say also that Thomas Rotherham College is something of a microcosm of the college sector - great pass rates, high investment in new facilities, over 10 per cent of learners from the black and ethnic minority community, a lively modern and fun approach to teaching and learning; with the student - no matter where they are eventually bound - at the centre of it all.

John Bingham is Chair of the Board of the Association of Colleges