By collaborating with Shoestring FE colleges can improve their business development offering in the region and contribute further to economic growth. The resources can help enhance both their apprentices’ and T level students’ business impact on their company, providing meaningful work placement experiences. Combined with employee bootcamps, Shoestring gives FE providers a hands-on training programme that can improve a company’s productivity as well as develop the participant’s role.

The Shoestring Programme

The Shoestring for FE programme enhances learners work placements by offering a structured set of activities to realise digital projects that add real value to local businesses. This practical training is a rapid way to further develop transferable skills of Level 3 (T Level / BTEC) learners studying engineering, construction or digital courses. Therefore helping 16-19 year old understand industrial needs for digital solutions and gain practical experience with projects applied in companies. Overall, offering FE colleges a seamless way to strengthen relationships with local companies and deliver skills needed to drive productivity in the region.

The Shoestring Programme for T Level at a Glance

The Shoestring for FE programme comprises four stages that take place in college and local businesses. The first two stages focus on scoping digitalisation activities for manufacturing SMEs as well as providing training for Shoestring solutions deployment. The last two stages focus on interpreting insights from collected data as well as to assess how the Shoestring solutions impacted a business.