How leadership turned digital ambition into organisation-wide action at Suffolk New College
A need to develop a policy around the use of AI emerged as part of a wider review of Suffolk New College’s overall digital offer.
To help bring this work together and shape its strategic direction, the college turned to our digital elevation tool (DET).
Suffolk New College is a general further education college specialising in vocational and technical education, including T Levels. It offers courses across a wide range of subjects for young people, adults and apprentices. Each year, the college educates more than 5,500 learners across Suffolk, Norfolk, and North Essex, making it one of the leading providers of skills-based education in the East of England.
The college delivers education across four campuses. These include a town-centre location in Ipswich, the Suffolk Rural Campus in Otley for land-based education, and coastal provision in Leiston and Halesworth under the college’s On The Coast brand.
Suffolk New College is also working closely with Sizewell C. The college will support this Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project by meeting its skills needs through a new campus in Leiston. This purpose-built facility, funded by Sizewell C, is scheduled to open in September 2027.
Under the leadership of Abi Thompson, director of quality, teacher development and student progress, and with the full support of the executive team and board of governors, our digital elevation tool was instrumental in the development of a new digital strategy.
Shortly after appointment to her current role, Abi began to look at a policy for the use of AI but quickly realised the need to embed digital strategy across the organisation.
“When we started to look more deeply into the work around AI, we realised that we had not asked our teams about technology or carried out any meaningful surveys, and that we did not have a digital strategy. Individuals were using technology, but there was no core focus.”
An executive decision to use the digital elevation tool
The board of governors and senior management team agreed that the DET was the logical first step in assessing how far Suffolk New College had come – and how far it still had to go to achieve digital transformation.
Developed by Jisc, the DET is an online self-assessment tool designed to allow senior strategic leaders in FE and skills organisations to validate their organisation’s current position against five key themes and map their digital journey in each area against the digital elevation model.
Key to making it work was strong digital leadership and executive buy-in from the senior team from the very start of the process.
Abi says:
“I have always been taught that the only way to make a strategy work is to begin at the top, so leaders can drive it forward. The leadership team wanted the digital strategy to align with quality and to be a central feature, rather than something that felt like a bolt-on.
“We worked with governors and the executive team to complete parts of the tool, then rolled it out to teachers, business support staff and managers. This meant we gathered insight from every level of the organisation, while giving common ground, identifying where people needed to be upskilled and enabling agreement on how to move forward. The Jisc assessment directly informed our strategy and the targets we set.”
A digital strategy embedded in the college’s overall vision
Using the DET crystallised thinking about the importance of digital, and that it was not just an IT responsibility but needed to be at the heart of the organisation’s vision as one of its ‘strategic wheels’.
Governors came from a wide range of industries and backgrounds, but the tool provided common ground, identifying opportunities for improvement, and enabling agreement on how to move forward.
Actionable insights from the DET
Following the exercise with the leadership, the DET tool was rolled out across the whole organisation – from teaching staff to business support teams. With five key themes and multiple sub-themes, the tool lends itself to collaborative working, allowing subgroups and committees to identify and address skills gaps.
External experts, including local employers, were invited onto the digital strategy group, providing valuable external insight.
Futureproofing was a crucial focus.
Abi said:
“The pace of change, particularly in AI, is rapid. We have to think not just about what we are doing now, but what comes next – focusing on future readiness and ensuring staff have the right expertise so that we are not teaching outdated skills.”
An ongoing process
Following the DET process is just the beginning of the journey for Suffolk New College. Ongoing and future initiatives include:
- Development of a Digital Futures curriculum for staff, including CPD components mapped to core digital competencies
- Training for governors, to ensure they remain up to date in awareness and skills
- Horizon scanning, building relationships with other colleges to share insight and expertise
- Upskilling within Abi’s own team to underline skills and confidence as leaders of change
- A mentoring project, where innovators across the college will act as champions within each vocational area
For Abi, it has been satisfying to see how far her organisation has come through using the DET – and to be approached, via Jisc by other colleges for advice on best practice.
“We found the DET straightforward and user-friendly, and the questions encouraged reflection and prompted consideration of areas we might not otherwise have thought about,” she says. “Our focus is always on learner success, and this tool has helped us ensure that we’re teaching in the right way, with the right skills so we can focus on achieving that success.”