Education Update – What’s New in SDC Education?

Students, Courses and Qualifications 

The FTCC and TCC components of the TCST continue to run successfully with the academic year 2025-6 seeing 5 new students enrolling for the first year from 5 different UK companies.  

6 students completed year one, gaining the FTCC qualification in summer 2025, 2 of whom have continued into Year 2 beginning the TCC component of the course. They have joined a third student who has already completed one year of learning at TCC level. 

Finally, one student successfully completed the TCC this year making them the first to complete the course in its new format as the TCST. Unfortunately, 3 students left the course during the last academic year, 2 to employment outside the industry and one for personal reasons.  

Teaching and Learning 

 Delivery of any education programme has two vital components: 

Similarly, but from the student’s perspective, learning has two vital components: 

In each case, point 1 is easy: From the delivery angle there is a syllabus detailing the topics to be covered and, from the student perspective, there are clear learning objectives which translate ‘what to teach’ into ‘what to learn’. The ‘how’ is where the skill and the hard work come in. So how is this done at SDC in 2025? 

Course Aims 

It is vital in today’s education climate that students are encouraged to develop transferrable skills, as opposed to merely acquiring knowledge, to which end the overall aims are to: 

The academic goal is that learners from diverse educational and experiential backgrounds will acquire the scientific and cognitive abilities for technical development in their respective workplaces. Crucially, however, they will also leave with transferrable skills which will increase their capacity to operate in many domains so improving their overall work- and life- chances. This can only be done successfully through inclusion, encouragement and rewarding progress along with attainment. The inclusion and portfolio sections below demonstrate how learning is facilitated to this end. 

Student Inclusion 

Education today values progress as highly as attainment; gone are the days when students should be expected to attend a lesson or lecture, blithely write down every word and ‘swallow the content whole’ without being given the option to contribute. The approach to teaching and learning is now absolutely student centred and uses a holistic approach, which is vital bearing in mind that students enrolling on a course provided by the SDC may not have been involved in learning for many years.  

Provision includes, but is not limited to: 

An alternative learning needs programme based on the requirements of the Joint Committee for Qualifications (JCQ) (1) and DfE guidelines (2) Ranging levels of support exist from provision of different coloured backgrounds for reading materials to additional 1:1 tutorial and examination time. 

Academic ‘v’ Holistic Learning 

The Student Portfolio – Adapted form Zubizarreta, 2009 (3)