CMETB lodges wish list for college of the future

The Cavan Monaghan Education and Training Board has submitted a preliminary business case to SOLAS in respect of a Further Education and Training College of the Future for Cavan.

The submission was lodged in mid-January and the Department of Education will shortly evaluate each project under a range of criteria such as value for money, affordability and strategic policy and priority alignment, in line with the requirements of the infrastructure guidelines. ETBs will be informed of the outcome once this process is completed.

The local ETB, with support from SOLAS, has been working for a number of months on its business case in an effort to secure money from the ‘College of the Future Major Projects Fund.

A spokesperson for CMETB told The Anglo-Celt: “This was a sizeable submission outlining a range of different options with costings, architectural considerations and economic and carbon emissions/climate action appraisals for each.”

Emphasising that the wishlist set out in the business case are “only options at this point”, the CMETB said that SOLAS has requested that submissions remain “confidential”.

On his most recent visit to Cavan, Minister for Further and Higher Education, Simon Harris, cut the ribbon on a substantial modular unit for CMETB at Dublin Road, hinting at a “big project” in the pipeline.

The modular facility gave 300 students access to a range of PLC programmes and allows for the further growth of Cavan Institute, but Minister Harris acknowledged “a huge project has already been approved for the development of a 1,000-pupil facility for Cavan Institute, which is proceeding to the next stage of the assessment process as we speak.”