Reflections on ten years as Principal and CEO

As I commence my last full month at Morley College London, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the many friends of Morley who have supported the work of the College during my ten-year tenure as Principal and CEO.

I am immensely grateful for the trust placed in the College by our students; the valued contribution of staff colleagues; the support and challenge of governors and the willing collaboration of partners.

I am allowing myself this moment to be personally proud of what we have achieved together since 2015 as a college community, especially given the human and organisational cost of Covid in the middle years of my time as Principal.

An expanded College

By coincidence, this message marks five years since an event to celebrate the historic Waterloo Centre for Adult Education on Westminster Bridge Road joining with two further centres of learning to expand significantly the range of learning opportunities Morley provides across the Capital.

In March 2020 we marked the major Morley milestone of the North Kensington Centre for Skills and the Chelsea Centre for Creative Industries – as they are now known – becoming an integral part of an enlarged Morley College London.  As well as students joining us in college, it has continued to be vital to make learning as accessible as possible for all, and I am delighted to report that Morley’s community learning on behalf of Lambeth Council and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is going from strength to strength, supported by the ever-active team of colleagues based at the College’s Stockwell Community Centre. 

The greatest privilege as Principal has been to celebrate with students their many successes at the College’s annual awards. In reflecting on the impact of learning and the ways in which we have enhanced the college environment in support of student success, many highlights come to mind.

An enhanced learning environment

The first of these are the improvements we have been able to make to the college’s physical estate and facilities over the past decade.

A £5.8m grant from the Department for Education (DfE) to refurbish key elements of the Waterloo Centre for Adult Education – including the historic and much-loved Emma Cons Hall – is the latest investment in the College’s buildings and facilities, and work began just this month.

The project will replace the roof and transform the Waterloo Centre’s energy efficiency in a college-wide drive to achieve net zero. It will sensitively modernise the Centre’s main performance spaces, upgrading their acoustics, heating systems, infrastructure and accessibility.

Back in 2023, a £13.5m grant from the DfE transformed facilities for students at Morley’s North Kensington Centre for Skills. The Centre was saved as a learning space by community activism after the tragedy of the Grenfell Tower fire, and the subsequent redevelopment increased the Centre’s capacity and fitted out teaching facilities with the latest technology and equipment, providing a much-improved learning experience for the local communities of North Kensington.

Morley’s Chelsea Centre for Creative Industries is a specialist centre dedicated to the development of arts, design, media and technology practice, as well as supporting our English, Maths and ESOL students. A £3m renovation completed in 2024 has delivered modern, flexible and larger teaching spaces fit for the demands of students of 21st century creative industries.

Later this year, the Centre (which was awarded the Mayor of London’s Quality Mark for Creative Industries in 2023) will debut additional new facilities – including a TV studio, and ‘Makerspace’ – further enhancing and encouraging creative practice.

With state-of-the-art radio studios at all three teaching centres, reflecting the founding of Morley Radio in 2019, and a fully refurbished professional-grade art gallery in Waterloo, the physical learning environment of the College has never been better. With great thanks to the DfE and Greater London Authority (GLA), these new resources are opening up opportunities for an increasing number of students at all ages and stages of learning.

Once completed, the Emma Cons Hall and the adjacent Johnny Harris Studio Theatre will again play host to Morley’s impressive and expanding programme of performances and events. The Hall will once again become the home base of Penny Lectures, which the College has proudly hosted since the 1880s.

An unrivalled diversity

Students at Morley span the generations: from 16-year-olds at our North Kensington and Chelsea centres, to adults of all ages at the Waterloo Centre, from 18 to 90 years young.  Our challenge is to respond to this unrivalled diversity: Morley’s contemporary curriculum features over 2,000 courses, from creative arts to humanities, sciences, essential skills, and more, all of it delivered at a multitude of levels, from unaccredited short courses to accredited programmes specifically tailored to 16-18 and adult audiences.

Community outreach from our Stockwell Centre offers impactful workshops, courses and community hubs, which support adults from all over London to re-skill, upskill and improve their wellbeing through learning. With major funding from the GLA for adult education, supplemented by funding from Lambeth Council, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and the DfE, the College delivers vital courses in ESOL, English, maths, green skills and digital skills that students tell us change their lives and those of their families and communities.

This autumn, Morley will start to offer new undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in Creative Practice, drawing on the diverse range of disciplinary expertise across Morley’s liberal arts education to offer a unique blend of creative experiences and opportunities. This follows the 2023 awarding by the Office for Students of a prestigious Gold rating in the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) for outstanding student experiences and outcomes.

The TEF outcome highlighted teaching excellence and effective engagement with employers and external professional networks as contributing to an outstanding academic experience for its students. The TEF panel’s report praised our links with partners, such as the UK Fashion and Textile Association, and the Association of Photographers, among others. And whilst the TEF report is particular to our HE provision, I know that the attributes it highlights are, in many ways, universal to the Morley experience.

The next chapter

As I now prepare to join Bishop Grosseteste University in Lincoln as Vice-Chancellor and CEO, I will continue to advocate for adult education. I am hugely grateful to all the friends of Morley who have been part of our journey over the past ten years.

I have every confidence the College will continue to thrive, moving forward with increasing momentum in delivering the Morley Mission: to inspire individuals and strengthen communities through the transformative impact of lifelong learning.

by Dr Andrew Gower, Principal and CEO, 2015-2025