The announcement earlier this year of 19 new Technical Excellence Colleges across defence, clean energy, digital and technologies, and advanced manufacturing marked the latest phase in strengthening specialist skills provision across England.
These new colleges build on the introduction of 10 Construction Technical Excellence Colleges in 2025, extending the model into four further sectors.
Technical Excellence Colleges are not only centres of high-quality delivery; they are also expected to play an important regional leadership role. This includes working with other providers and employers to understand skills needs, strengthen partnerships and help shape provision across a wider area.
For colleges taking on this role, an important consideration is how to build a clear understanding of the skills landscape beyond their own organisation.
Building a clearer regional picture
Alongside their detailed knowledge of their own provision, local communities and employer relationships, Technical Excellence Colleges may benefit from a wider understanding of:
- – The scale and distribution of provision across the region
- – How delivery varies by provider, geography and sub-region
- – The balance of provision across different levels and routes
- – Where there may be gaps, overlaps and opportunities
- – How provision aligns with current demand and future skills needs
Developing this wider view can be challenging, particularly where information is dispersed across multiple providers and local areas. It becomes much more achievable when providers work collaboratively, sharing data and insight in a structured and consistent way.
By bringing together consistent learner data, applying a clear methodology and translating the findings into usable regional insight, colleges can develop a stronger evidence base for planning, partnership working and future development.
Learning from our work with Construction Technical Excellence Colleges
Following the introduction of Construction Technical Excellence Colleges, RCU worked with Wigan and Leigh College and other colleges across the North West of England to develop a shared evidence base for construction provision across the region.
The work was designed to provide a clearer understanding of how provision was distributed, where patterns of participation and delivery differed, and where opportunities might exist for collaboration and future development.
Using Individualised Learner Record (ILR) data collected securely from participating colleges, the analysis identified several important findings, including:
- – Strong growth in 16–19 provision, increasing by 32%, although this was concentrated at lower levels, with more limited growth at Level 3
- – Significant differences between sub-regions, reflecting variations in learner participation and course delivery
- – An important role in supporting learners from deprived areas, with construction provision attracting a disproportionate number of these learners
- – Changing curriculum patterns, including rapid growth in areas associated with T Levels
- – More modest changes in adult and apprenticeship provision, alongside emerging trends at higher levels
Although this work focused on construction, the underlying considerations are relevant to Technical Excellence Colleges across all sectors: understanding how provision is distributed, where demand is changing and where collaboration may support a more coherent regional skills response.
Perhaps most importantly, the work highlighted the value of developing a shared regional evidence base. By bringing together data and insight from across the region, colleges were able to build a broader understanding of provision and support more informed discussions around priorities, opportunities and future development.
This kind of regional understanding can help colleges to:
- – Define their regional role and footprint
- – Strengthen partnership working
- – Identify priorities and opportunities for development
- – Support progression pathways across providers
- – Align provision with current and future skills needs
- – Demonstrate their contribution to local and regional priorities
Supporting the next phase of Technical Excellence Colleges
As colleges across the Technical Excellence College network continue to develop their role and regional contribution, many will be considering how best to understand their wider skills landscape, define their regional footprint and work effectively with partners.
RCU combines education-sector expertise with national, regional and provider-level learner data. We work with colleges to coordinate data collection, apply consistent analytical methods and translate the findings into a clear and usable regional evidence base.
Our support can help Technical Excellence Colleges to:
- – Understand their specialist provision across a wider region
- – Benchmark delivery against regional patterns and trends
- – Identify opportunities for growth, progression and collaboration
- – Explore alignment with local and regional skills priorities
- – Develop the evidence needed for strategic planning and stakeholder engagement
If your college is exploring how to develop a fuller picture of technical skills provision across its region, RCU can help build the evidence base needed to support planning, partnership working, regional engagement and the continued development of your Technical Excellence College.