Northlink College hosts international visitors
Delaware Technical Community College Visiting Northlink College. From left: Pierre de Waal (Education and Training Coordinator), Leon Beech (CEO: Northlink College), Paul Morris (Director of Corporate & Community Programmes: Delaware Technical Community College), Trish van der Merwe (DCEO: Innovation and Development: Northlink College)
Northlink College, being the second biggest FET College in the country with over 16000 students, has been quite busy over the past couple of months with hosting various delegations of both international and national educational status at the College.
The Colleges that came to visit Northlink included Delaware Technical Community College (USA), Stavanger Offshore Technical School (NORWAY), Gwent College (SOUTH WALES) and WestCol (MPUMALANGA, RSA). These Colleges each came with different expectations but they all had the same mandate, “find out how, with the help of other Colleges, we can better our educational offering,” and these delegates went home with more than just information…they also experienced what Northlink College is all about.
Says Trish van der Merwe: “We are honoured to have had these delegates with us and we are glad that we could share our knowledge and best practices and learn from each other to better the state of our Colleges and our educational systems.”
Some of the objectives/reasons for the various visits included: Linking with industry, Workplace Experience Contractual arrangements with Industry, Discussion on the Skills Employment project with the British Council and MerSETA and identifying opportunities for future collaborations.
“The fact that these delegates are visiting us in the year that has been named ‘the year of the artisan’ gives us great excitement as we continue to produce some of the best skilled workers with artisan training in the country,” adds Trish van der Merwe.
Northlink College has top industry leading trade test centres and centres of excellence that where visited on the various campuses by these delegates.