Principal of Crewe Engineering and Design UTC, Will Chitty, has exclusively spoken to Crewe Nub News about the town centre specialist college for students aged 14 to 19.

How has the new academic year started at Crewe UTC?

The new year has started really well. 140 new students have joined the college, our largest ever new intake, in both Year 10 and Year 12.

We have already hosted a number of employer events from our partners at Balfour Beatty, Network Rail and NHS so the new students are really getting a feel for life at the UTC.

While Year 10 is full again we still have some places on our Year 12 courses so it is not too late for students to join us if they have started somewhere else they aren't enjoying it.

Anyone interested in joining us now should contact us on our website.

What inspired you to lead a specialist engineering college like Crewe UTC?

I have been here three and a half years now. I joined Crewe UTC because I am particularly passionate about supporting students to find their destination and I think careers education is a bit underdone in the secondary sector.

The reason for that is there isn't any specialist funding for it. The careers offering tends to fall on the shoulder of one person in a secondary school and that person has got other teaching responsibilities.

I believe in starting with the end in mind, no matter what you are doing. The whole point in education for me is to make sure we are delivering well-rounded people into the world - young people who are ready to be successful adults.

I grew up in a time where we were told 'you can do whatever you want,' but what it really meant was you can pursue your passion and then you can turn that into a career. The reality is - you can't in every field.

There is a tiny number of people who can do these fantastic jobs, the world only needs so many footballers, athletes, musicians, actors and so on.

What we want for our young people when they go into society, is that they can make positive contributions which makes them feel good about themselves and is enriching for them as an individual.

When the opportunity to work at Crewe UTC came up, which heavily focuses on ensuring students leave ready to go into industry, it was too good an opportunity to miss.

It meant I could come and work in a setting directly supporting young people on a day-to-day basis, preparing them for their futures in a really exciting and tangible way.

What makes Crewe UTC different from other educational facilities in the area - what can you provide others can't?

We are a specialist engineering college with world-beating facilities, which are the envy of some universities, let alone other colleges.

Our facilities have to be seen to be believed, even the photographs of our workshop and other areas don't do them justice.

We have a huge number of specialist engineering teachers with an extensive range of professional experience, which they can pass on to our students.

Other educational settings might only have one or two teachers in each department and quite understandably of course, but that means students don't get the full breadth of experience they do with our staff.

There is also excellent curriculum integration at Crewe UTC, with us still delivering English, Maths and Science at Key Stage Four [Year 10 and 11].

We also have fantastic teachers and facilities in those three essential subjects, crucial to students being successful in life and our industry in particular.

I often say to parents looking with their teenagers to enrol here, we are a very good, highly effective school and an exceptional engineering college.

To be a good school, you need to have a great pastoral system and a great curriculum - Crewe UTC has both.

What are some important statistics for Crewe UTC readers should be aware of?

Crewe Engineering & Design UTC is an Engineering T-Level provider, offering an 'exceptional' course for aspiring engineers (Ryan Parker).

Crewe UTC is made up of 310 students. We are a small setting, but we embrace that and ensure everybody here is well-known.

We have a disproportionally high number of pastoral staff compared to the students, allowing us to give every young person the time right and attention to ensure they are successful.

30 per cent of our students are girls and this number is increasing year-on-year. The industry has got ambitions to be 50 per cent female so we want more girls to be joining us.

At Crewe UTC, we have one of the highest T-Level populations in the country. The T-Level is the flagship sixth-form course, a triple weighted qualification (equivalent of three A-Levels).

We are an Engineering T-Level provider and have more students on that course than most providers nationally.

This covers an enormous amount of ground, giving students a comprehensive experience of the sector.

What sets this course apart, is that students do a nine-week industry placement. Students will become engrossed in the work of a company and have a real-world experience.

We have already secured next year's T-Level industry placements. Our industry partners are offering placements to our students and this includes Bentley Motors.

Crewe UTC's T-Level is an exceptional course for aspiring engineers.

How do your partnerships with local/big-name employers benefit students?

We are partnered with over 80 different engineering firms, with 85 per cent of them within 10 miles of us.

The benefit of having so many industry partners so close to us is that they can work directly with students on a regular basis and provide industry placements, mentoring and guidance.

They are all involved with us because they have a workforce shortage and want young people to join their business.

When our students are exposed to one of our employer partners, it sparks their imagination and they end up applying for their vacancies when they graduate from us.

That access to employer partners really is what sets us apart. Every young person who has come to Crewe UTC has done it because they are aspirational for their future.

What you can't expect, is for those young people and their families to make industry links independent of us, because that just isn't the reality.

I see a big part of our responsibility to students is creating as many workplace introductions for them as possible so they can progress on to a high-quality destination.

What kind of student thrives at Crewe UTC and what skills do you look out for?

There are no entry requirements to Crewe UTC. The only thing we ask is that students have aspirations for their future and want to pursue a career in engineering and/or design.

It is a massive sector and not imperative individuals need to be absolutely certain what they want to achieve - they just need to know they want to achieve something in this sector.

It is a terrible question to put to a young person, but when I ask 'what do you want to be when you are older' I like the answer of 'I don't know, but I want a job I enjoy and one that pays well where I can have a nice house, car and afford nice holidays.'

Those are aspirations that are worth having, because that is what makes the world turn.

Engineering and design are fast-changing fields, how do you keep the curriculum up-to-date?

Principal of Crewe Engineering & Design UTC, Will Chitty, believes the specialist college has 'world-beating' facilities (Ryan Parker).

While all these employers work with us directly to headhunt for students, they are very generous with their time, expertise and knowledge so they are constantly updating us with how the industry is changing from their perspective.

We do something here called Employer Set Projects (ESPs), where every student will do at least three per year.

An employer will come in and deliver a project from start to finish with a year group of students.

For example, Bentley engineers recently came in and set the task of designing a new steering wheel for one of their battery electric vehicles.

They worked with our students to complete the task and were then on the judging panel, where every student presented back to Bentley engineers the work they had completed.

We made a competition of it, with the Bentley engineers choosing the winner. Everyone wins in that situation though, because you get a real-world engineering experience.

In terms of preparation for adult life and going into the sector, I don't think there is anything better than that.

What are your main targets for Crewe UTC right now?

Everything we do is about getting our students ready to go into industry. My main ambition is for as many graduates to go into the engineering sector locally as possible.

We have national and multi-national businesses on board, so students enter the workforce in their Crewe office and then go off to all these wonderful places.

That just speaks of the quality of opportunity young people in Crewe have access to if they are given the right skills and experiences while in education.

The T-Level Engineering course is delivered better at Crewe UTC than anywhere else locally and I want more young people to join it.

Because this qualification is only five years old, it is still not as well understood as it could be. Most students will still think about A-Levels or BTECs, not realising the T-Level is an option.

When visiting local secondary schools, I talk specifically about our T-Level course and what a fantastic opportunity it is.

If at 16 years old, you know you want to pursue a career in engineering and design, there is no better course than the T-Level.

We now have a cohort total of 80 T-Level students, which is why we are one of the biggest providers for a single T-Level qualification in the country.

I want more students on this course and give them this fantastic opportunity.

What are you most proud of since becoming principal of Crewe UTC?

On our foyer wall at the front of the college, we have all our graduates, displayed like football cards with who they are, what they have studied and what workplace they have gone to.

I have signed off another 22 posters of student profiles to go up on the wall. The destinations some of these students achieve are absolutely incredible.

The degree apprenticeships in particular, which are actually harder than getting into Oxford or Cambridge, are highlighted here.

A quarter of our T-Level students went on to a degree apprenticeship this summer and I think that is fantastic.

To be able to go into a degree being paid a salary, without any students fees or debt, within four or five years you may have enough financial backing to be putting a deposit on a house.

These degree apprenticeships offer fantastically paid jobs with great career prospects for someone by the time they are in their early to mid-20s.

We are genuinely changing lives by presenting students with these opportunities, but they have to work their socks off to get them. When they do the look on their faces is unmatched.

Most come back as well and do assemblies for us and mentor the next generation. What any teacher would say is that the motivating force in this job is seeing the success of the young people you have taught.

At Crewe UTC, we build professional industry-standard relationships with students, modelling what the world of work will look like, which is why they are successful. It is just incredibly gratifying.

What events are Crewe UTC holding in the coming months to reach out to the local community?

We host three open evenings a year, open to anyone to come down and watch a presentation from myself, listen to existing students talk about their experiences and have a tour of our specialist facilities.

The next open evening is Thursday 20 November and you can sign up on our website to reserve your place for that. Open evening events will also take place in March and June 2026.

Because we are unique and have an atypical entry point, starting at Year 10 and in Year 12, we offer a tour to anyone interested.

I did 200 tours in 2024/25 and understand people have to see it to believe it here. I encourage people to come and look around Crewe UTC in the daytime and we will walk the college and see it for how it is.

I encourage anyone to come and see how we motivate our students in an industry standard way.

What advice would you give to a student locally, who is insure about their future?

I think students should start with the end in mind and think about what they want to achieve.

They should think about what they want to achieve in the broadest sense, whether they want a job where there are further opportunities to train and develop, a job that is well-paid, predictable and reliable.

Whether they want a job where you are working with people or machinery, or a job where they are creating something or maintaining something.

There are so many questions they can ask themselves, but work out what satisfies them and then continue to work backwards from there and seek out as much advice and guidance as they can get their hands on.

Every young people attends a school where there is a careers guidance staff member. Go and speak to that person about what opportunities are available to them for the next step.

They don't need to look into specifics 10 years into the future, they just need to make sure they are heading in the right direction.

If some of their answers to those questions are engineering, then Crewe UTC might be right destination. They can come and see whether or not this is the right place for them.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

READ MORE: Cheshire East Council narrowly agrees to back plans for devolution deal.

Free from clickbait, pop-up ads and unwanted surveys, Crewe Nub News is a quality online newspaper for our town.

If it wasn't for sponsors like Crewe Engineering and Design UTC, our local news site would not be possible. Thank you.

Subscribe to our FREE weekly newsletter email HERE - just click the 'SIGN UP' button.

Please consider following Crewe Nub News on Facebook or Twitter.