PPE and emergency parcels - how Milton Keynes College is supporting the community in the crisis

Students and staff at Milton Keynes College are finding an amazing number of ways to support the community during the COVID-19 crisis, from providing PPE, posting entertaining and informative videos, taking food to vulnerable people and still functioning as a college.

Fashion and textile students are making scrubs and washbags for health workers, the hair and beauty team have donated a significant amount of PPE, while engineering and construction teams have donated 120 pairs of protective goggles for Milton Keynes Hospital made on a 3D printer.

College principal, Chris McLean, said: “Everyone’s trying to do their bit and the reaction of all the staff makes me very proud indeed. The way the curriculum teams in particular have worked away furiously behind the scenes to make sure every lesson still goes ahead as planned is really impressive. Nobody else really sees what they do but we certainly wouldn’t be able to achieve a fraction of what we are doing without them.”

The college has also been offering opportunities for people who aren’t students but who want to learn during the lockdown to do some learning.

A thousand people have already taken advantage of free distance learning courses covering a host of subjects from dementia awareness through to managing difficult children in a classroom setting – something a lot of parents might find very useful at the moment.

Milton Keynes College is also a provider of courses for offenders and they haven’t been neglected either. Staff have been sending a steady stream of work books into prisons so their learning isn’t any more disrupted than can be avoided. Support for offenders on release is also continuing despite the enormous challenges involved.

CEO and group principal, Dr Julie Mills OBE said: “Once this is all over I hope very much that staff and students at the college will be able to look back on this time with a great deal of pride. The college exists to serve the community and it is made up entirely of people from the community. It’s inspiring to know that during such hardship so many are doing so much to help those who are most in need. I always believed our people would step up to the mark in a crisis and I’ve never been happier to be proved so spectacularly right.”