Debate contribution: Belfast Metropolitan College, Castlereagh Campus: Proposed Closure

Debate contribution by Mr David Brooks on 21 May 2024.

MLA

Mr David Brooks

Party at the time

Democratic Unionist Party

Date

21 May 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Adjournment

Heading

Belfast Metropolitan College, Castlereagh Campus: Proposed Closure

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4491988

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Like my colleagues, I speak today in support of Castlereagh campus, its staff, students and people in the local community, all of whom are dismayed by the proposal to close the site. Any such closure would be, as my colleague said, regressive and a denial of opportunity to the community that it serves. It would also be a strategic error when it comes to supplying the workforce that is required for growing industries in Belfast and Northern Ireland. Castlereagh campus is ideally situated in the heart of working-class communities in East Belfast. It plays a vital role in ensuring those communities' access to courses that Belfast Met provides, equipping them with education and skills for work, encouraging social mobility and equality of opportunity. I know that the Minister, not least from our short time together in Belfast City Council, has a strong interest in building up working-class communities. Indeed, I know that she is aware of this issue, having attended the consultation at the college with me in the past months. I ask her to listen to the appeals here today. It is well known that there are long-term issues with educational attainment in Protestant working-class communities, particularly among males. A recent study of educational underachievement that Queen's University and Stranmillis undertook identified the lack of access to local educational provision as a major contributor to underachievement, and it said that distances to provision serve to reinforce the idea that education is not a priority. The removal of further education facilities in Castlereagh would only reinforce that negative perspective and further entrench educational underachievement. The fact that the consultation on the potential closure of Castlereagh campus seeks to use the lack of diversity as a reason to consider closure is to discriminate against communities in that part of Belfast on the basis that many come from a Protestant working-class background. There is a failure to consider that that cohort has repeatedly been identified as requiring greater access to and assistance in attaining qualifications and skills. I share the concern of others about the lack of engagement on, imagination about or serious consideration of alternative options. Along with colleagues, I was exasperated and expressed my frustrations that the college had positive blueprints and visions on its shelf that were never seriously promoted or driven forward and, as such, have had little progress. Furthermore, BMC has raised concerns about the condition of the campus. It is simply not an acceptable or valid argument for BMC to use the condition of the building as a reason to move out of an area when it has chosen actively not to invest in the campus. The real shame is that the Castlereagh campus is so perfectly located to serve a spectrum of growing new industries and reinvigorated traditional industries in east Belfast. These businesses are ever hungry for skilled workers, and nowhere is better located than Castlereagh to partner with them to serve that need. It is a world-class advanced manufacturing hub, producing highly skilled talent for world-leading and growing local businesses nearby, like Thales, Spirit AeroSystems and Harland & Wolff — businesses that we discussed just yesterday in the Chamber when talking about the growing potential of the defence industries here. Indeed, the campus, quite uniquely, has an aircraft fuselage and the advantage of significant space, which other campuses lack, to host such facilities that could be utilised to train our future workforce. It is not just about manufacturing. At the opposite end of Montgomery Road from the campus lies Loop Studios, which is another base for Belfast's relatively young but booming multimedia and creative industries. The campus is already a peerless local centre for cybersecurity, with a course that is thriving in Castlereagh, serving an industry in which Belfast has established itself as one of the global leaders and demonstrating the need for investment, not abandonment. Furthermore, a previous proposal that the campus had looked at was creating a potential sports hub. This should be looked at again. There is a real potential for growth in this sector. A number of sports clubs in East Belfast are professional, such as Ulster Rugby and Glentoran FC, and many other clubs are looking at similar models. As part of that professional set-up, there is an educational element, especially around academies. At the moment, these are catered for through universities in GB, and it would make more sense for local facilities in Castlereagh to be used for courses, either directly or by tying in with universities. Wider work needs to be done by the Department on the role of colleges and universities. They should not be in direct competition. In the course of meetings with BMC, I got the distinct impression that the college, in a way that is not uncommon within the further education sector, has become compliant and subservient to the notion of the dominance of our universities. Our universities are rightly celebrated, but that does not mean that our FE colleges should bow to them. With universities veering ever further into courses on foundation levels of education, which were traditionally catered for by FE colleges — doubtless with the aim of reaping financial benefits — BMC seems remarkably resistant to considering anything that might irk or cause a deterioration in its relationship with them. I perceive it to be akin to an institutional Stockholm syndrome. The universities continue to steal FE's lunch money, and colleges all but thank them from the crumbs of their splendid tables, when colleges would be best placed to offer apprenticeships that are linked to industry need. The abandonment of the Castlereagh campus would be symptomatic and symbolic of continuing a misplaced submissiveness and failure of leadership at all levels to defend the place of BMC from the incursion of universities upon the viability of the entire sector. A decision to leave the Castlereagh campus, which is so clearly an asset, to facilitate the range of courses and related facilities that could not easily be facilitated at other campuses and would require a new location being sought, would run entirely contrary to logic. It would be a decision to abandon an area with a locality far more ripe with key demographics for further education to target. Any closure of the Castlereagh campus will be a denial of educational opportunities and career progression to communities that are all too often left behind. The Minister and BMC have an opportunity to pause and consider alternatives. As an MLA for East Belfast, along with my party colleagues, I am happy to work with the college to find a long-term solution and secure educational provision for the local area.

1,106 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 10:35 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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