Duke: 14 is ideal age for college

L12-1226 Prince Andrew visits and opens UTC Central Bedfordshire college, Parkside Drive, Houghton Regis. Rick Redman JR 41 9.10.12

Published on 10/10/2012 09:23

A new vocational college in Houghton Regis received the royal seal of approval yesterday when it was officially opened by HRH The Duke of York, Prince Andrew – who said he believes that all college education should begin at 14.

Opened just three months after receiving funding approval, Central Beds University Technical College promises to be a “centre of excellence” for 14 to 19-year-olds wishing to pursue a career in engineering and design.

Arriving by helicopter, The Duke – who is fourth in line to the throne – applauded the innovative college and said he believes more educational institutions should work the same way.

He told the Gazette: “If you look at the way the school system works, people start having to make life choices at 14.

“Parents are absolutely vital to the process – so too are teachers – but I think 14 is about the right age for young people to be given these opportunities.

“It’s all about delivering young people into local workforces and it’s the combination of education, employers and businesses working together to deliver an output that everybody wants.

“What I would like to see is young people being given the inspiration to follow their paths, and of course university is not necessarily the answer for everybody as soon as they leave school – each individual is different.”

Principal Bob Shore told the Gazette: “His Royal Highness is an ex-Navy captain, this guy flies planes, this guy has fought in wars – he understands the need for technology.

“He’s been in life-or-death situations where his life has depended on someone else thousands of miles away who’s made a component on a machine he’s flying. He gets it.”

For more information about the Central Beds Council-funded college, visit www.centralbedsutc.org.

News

Looking for...

Featured advertisers

Jobs

Search for a job

Motors

Search for a car

Make Model Price from Price to

Property

Search for a house

Buy Rent

Bedrooms Price from Price from Price to Price to

What is a Cookie?
What is a Flash Cookie?
Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?
About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.
This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.
Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.
The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:
- Revenue Science ►
  
  A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.
- Google Ads ►
  
  Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.
- Webtrends / Google Analytics ►
  
  This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.
- Dart for Publishers ►
  
  This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.
- ComScore ►
  
  ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.
- Local Targeting ►
  
  Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.
- Grapeshot ►
  
  We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.
- Subscriptions Online ►
  
  Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.
- Add This ►
  
  Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.
- 3rd Party Cookies ►
  
  We use Advertising agencies to provide us with some of the advertising on our websites. These include (but are not limited to) Specific Media, The Rubicon Project, AdJug, AdConion, Context Web. Please click on the provider name to visit their opt-out page.

Duke: 14 is ideal age for college

Top stories

News