Special Needs College in Rugby Bridges Employment Gap with Iron Mountain Partnership

The gap between what young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) want and what the job market offers them is stark. National figures show fewer than 5% of young people with learning difficulties are in employment, yet about 86% want to work. A new college opening in Rugby this September aims to close that divide by embedding its campus inside a working business.

The Employment Gap for Young People with SEND

Creating Tomorrow College, which already runs sites in Kettering, Daventry, Lutterworth and Wellingborough, is launching a Rugby campus in partnership with data storage company Iron Mountain. The site at Symmetry Park will introduce students aged 18-25 to careers in hospitality and retail, among other fields. Principal Gareth Ivett said the college's purpose is “to support our young people to develop their knowledge, skills and character to gain and sustain employment.”

How Creating Tomorrow College Works

The model is straightforward: place the classroom inside a live working environment. In Rugby, that means Iron Mountain’s facility becomes part of the curriculum from day one. “We embed our campuses within live working environments,” Ivett said. “In Rugby we’re partnered with a global company called Iron Mountain that starts preparing the learners from day one.” The college reports that 100% of its leavers go on to seek employment, a figure that reflects the design of the study programme rather than a guarantee of placement.

Demand for the approach is high. The Rugby campus has filled all but six places for its September intake. One parent, Phil from Rugby, whose daughter attends another Creating Tomorrow site and is about to start her third year on an internship, said the college “seemed to completely understand her needs.”

The broader context is that SEND provision in England is under strain. While the Times article on the country’s “SEN capital” could not be verified for this report, the employment statistics alone point to a systemic failure. Ivett put it plainly: “We know that our young people are eminently employable.” The college’s partnership model — embedding campuses within real businesses — offers one template for turning that potential into paid work.

For schools and local authorities wrestling with the debate over behaviour versus disability, the Creating Tomorrow approach suggests a shift in perspective. Instead of asking whether a student’s challenges are behavioural or medical, the college focuses on what the student can do in a workplace setting. That pragmatic lens may be more useful than the binary labels that often dominate SEND discussions.

The Rugby campus is not a silver bullet. It serves only 18- to 25-year-olds, and its 100% employment-seeking rate is self-reported. But in a system where fewer than one in 20 young people with learning difficulties hold a job, any model that moves the needle deserves attention. As Ivett noted, the gap between aspiration and reality is not about capability — it is about opportunity.

Read the original BBC article for more details.