The Bournemouth and Poole College (BPC) is a well established educational provider which delivers further education, higher education and community based courses in Bournemouth and in Poole on the south coast of England. It is one of the largest British colleges with thousands of learners each year.
Campuses
The college is based at three sites in Bournemouth and Poole. It's based at Lansdowne (in Bournemouth), North Road (in Poole) and The Fulcrum (Poole).
Lansdowne
The Lansdowne campus is located on the eastern side of Bournemouth town centre on the roundabout linking Bath Road, Meyrick Road, Christchurch Road and Holdenhurst Road. The main building has a large clocktower facing the roundabout. It is close to the East Cliff and Bournemouth University's Lansdowne Campus and a short distance from both the Bournemouth Station travel Interchange and from Bournemouth University's Talbot Campus.
Lansdowne is where the sixth form centre, beauty and holistic therapies, digital and computing, hairdressing, hospitality & catering, travel tourism & sport, vocational studies, workforce development, and business & professional studies are based.
The college was originally the Bournemouth Municipal College which opened in 1913. It is a listed building and is known for its clock tower (said to be an 'eyesore' when first built). A public library was part of the building until 2002. A small number of 'Horsa huts' were built in the 1940s and a large three-floor extension opened in 1957. In 1960 it took over the former Bournemouth School for Girls buildings which were two old Victorian houses (Ascham House [listed building] and Woodcote) which were used as the school when it opened in 1917. A building was built between these in 1932 which is now the catering block. The college and library were made a grade II listed building in 1973. Woodcote is now used for hairdressing and beauty therapy courses. Although modernised, no large extensions have been built to the present day.
North Road
The North Road campus is located near Poole Park and The Civic Centre.
Art and design, care education and community training (including childcare and nursing) teacher training and engineering services, and some applied computing courses are based here. North Road is also the base for pre-vocational programme courses for students with learning difficulties and disabilities.
This was Poole Technical College; the first three-storey building was built in 1957 with a small workshop block. It was not until 1967 that the major building, canteen and library were built along with more workshops. There are a number of wooden huts used for child and social care dating from the 1970s and a small number of offices in portable cabins across the centre. In 1989 the bricklaying block was built.
In the 1990s The Study Gallery was built, before being relaunched as KUBE in April 2009. This purpose-built, modern glass-fronted building was a prominent art gallery in the South West of England. The gallery was closed in 2010 due to lack of funding[1] and the building is now being used for the college's Sunseeker programme.
In 2016 the college stopped using its Constitution Hill site and instead opened up a new multimillion-pound site, the Jellicoe Theatre building, in Danecourt Road.
The Fulcrum
A site on the Fulcrum industrial estate, Tower Park, Poole for building services and construction crafts.
Further education courses
The college has 24 curriculum areas and runs hundreds of courses including:
Advances Technologies
Beauty
Business Administration
Business and Accounting
Construction Crafts
Design & Creative Arts
Digital and Computing
Early Years, Education, Health & Social Care
Engineering
ESOL
Financial Services
Foundation Studies
Hairdressing
Hospitality and Catering
Marine Technology
Media
Motor Vehicle
Music
Performing Arts
Renewable Technologies
Retail
Social and Applied Sciences
Sport
Teacher Training
Travel & Tourism
Uniformed Services
Apprenticeship courses
The college offers over 30 different apprenticeship opportunities including:[2]
