Opened in 2019, the Livestock Technology Centre is located at Abingdon & Witney College’s Common Leys Farm campus on the outskirts of Witney, providing young people with an innovative learning experience through the latest agricultural technology.
With the ability to provide 556m2 of learning space in the heart of rural Oxfordshire, the Centre is well-positioned to attract young people towards future opportunities across farming-related careers. More widely, the Centre enables a pipeline of future talent, addressing an agritech skills shortage in Oxfordshire.
OxLEP secured £1.139 million-worth of investment for the project via the Government's Local Growth Fund, part of an overall cost of £1.9 million. The Centre is helping to provide a solution to the agritech skills shortage problem in Oxfordshire and was opened on the 17th of May 2019.
Since then, a total of 804 students have gained experience and qualifications in agriculture through the Centre between 2019/20 and 2023/24.
Achievement rates within the Land Based Industries at the Centre in 2022/23 were 92% against a national average of 84%, with an expected increase of 3% for 2023/24 to 95%. Due to the additional learner numbers, to date 3.6 jobs have been created compared to a target of 2.5.
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