University Technical Colleges may not be the answer to the UK’s skills shortage after all

They were set up as an answer to two problems: the second-class status of technical education and the broader issue over workplace skills, so why, asks Mary Dejevsky, do so some UTCs seem to be failing?

A student in a technology lesson (stock image) (Getty)

A little over a year ago, Westminster residents learned an astonishing and perturbing piece of news. A new school in a brand new building that had opened barely three years before was suspending admissions and would probably close. It had cost a cool £16m.

It so happened that I had followed the fortunes of this school since its inception. Its site was on a bus route I often used, besides a three-way junction, which had afforded plenty of time to observe its progress. What’s more, unlike so many new constructions, it seemed a welcome addition.

The particular plot of land was one of those unfavoured tracts that somehow gets overlooked even when everything else seems to be booming. Next to the spaghetti of railway lines that converge on London’s Victoria Station, it was awkward in shape and location. It had always been betwixt and between, locked into an area dominated by social housing of various vintages, but within yards of exclusive Belgravia and the antique shops of Pimlico Road.