Places for year 10 
at college half filled

was confident that the UTC would be oversubscribed at both the 14- and 16-year-old points of entry in future years.

He said: “From next year I will be able to put our pupils in front of parents and they can talk about the opportunities that the UTC has given them. No UTC has ever opened full in year ten but I am very confident in the offer we have here in Sheffield. I went to see the JCB UTC in Staffordshire which was the first to open and they are oversubscribed year-on-year.”

The UTC is also in the process of appointing teaching staff for its opening in September. Mr Crew said it had received 187 applications for around 13 posts.

The UTC’s curriculum has been developed with employers in both the creative and digital media industries and advanced engineering and manufacturing sectors.

The new school aims to equip pupils with the skills and experience needed to work in areas such as animation, graphic design, digital communications and marketing, photography, film production and video games development along with advanced engineering and manufacturing careers such as developing products for the aerospace, electrical and robotics industries.

The £9.9m campus will include Arduino and Raspberry Pi workshops and IT environments for creating and testing technology, engineering mini factories, and advanced design and sound studios.

Students’ dress code will be related to the world of work and business rather than being a traditional uniform.

Prime Minister David Cameron has previously hailed UTCs as “the next great poverty-busting structural change we need”.

However Christine Blower, the general secretary of the NUT, has questioned whether pupils should be opting out of a mainstream school at 14.

She said: “Attempting to separate ‘technical’ or ‘vocational’ education from mainstream schools will lead to a two tier system.”

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