The 135-year-long story of EKC Broadstairs College 

EKC Broadstairs College has long been a strong player in its community and has a deep history in Thanet.

The College can trace its lineage all the way back to 1891, at the founding of the Ramsgate Technical Institute. At this time, the Institute shared the site of the Ramsgate County Secondary School, now known as Chatham & Clarendon Grammar School.  

Following a tumultuous period of change around the war, in 1947 the College was formed as Thanet Technical College and moved into the site of the former Holy Cross Convent in Ramsgate High Street. At this time, there were only 90 students, and 14 members of staff.  
 
In 1964, after a few years of discussion, the old Yarrow Home in Broadstairs was bought by the Kent Education Authority, alongside the 16 acres that came with it, and it opened as the new main site of the Technical College a year later. The building – dating to 1893 – was originally known as Wrotham House and was bought by Sir Alfred Yarrow with the aim to build a convalescent home there for young children. 

For many years, the college thrived within the historic building, becoming well known as a centre for Catering and Hospitality, and offering courses in Business too. Before long, two new buildings were opened, one of which was to house the new Department of Building and Engineering. 

As 1982 came around, the College was spread across Thanet with six departments based in Broadstairs, Ramsgate and Margate. It had become clear that the poor-quality facilities in Ramsgate and Margate needed to close, and an expansion at Broadstairs would enable this to happen. Three years later, two new buildings were opened, now known as the Horizon and Enterprise buildings.  

Independence came in 1993 as the College was incorporated as its own corporation, no longer under the control of Kent County Council. In 1997, the College gained its new Open Learning Resource Centre, now the Welcome Building, which was the first project in Thanet to be funded by the European Community (now the EU). 

The journey into the new millennium was a long one, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that the college had done all the expanding that it could, but with a new Principal in 2010, the drive for more continued. 

Aiming for the stars, the still Broadstairs-based College renamed itself to East Kent College in 2013, and soon gained its best Ofsted result ever of “Good with Outstanding Leadership”.  

The new name came just in time, as the opportunity to take over the former K College’s campuses in Dover and Folkestone created a truly regional institution. Just three years later, a chain of events began that led to the merger of the ailing Canterbury College (which also included Sheppey College) with the now very successful East Kent College, creating EKC Group for the very first time on the 1 February 2018.  

Just a year later, EKC Group would be required to play the ‘White Knight’ for another struggling college group in the county. This time it was Hadlow College and West Kent and Ashford College which were struggling under the weight of unsustainable finances.  

Following another competitive process, the Department for Education decided that EKC Group would be the preferred organisation to take on Ashford College and the Hadlow College Spring Lane site in Canterbury.  

Over the course of 7 years, the College has grown from a single site in Broadstairs, to a constituent of Kent’s largest college group, and in fact, one of the largest groups in the country.   

Throughout the expansion years, the College took on the challenge of not only continuing to develop new buildings on its site, but also sympathetically restored the Grade II listed Yarrow building into a four-star training hotel. 

Not content with these projects, the Group was part of Thanet District Councils bid into the first round of Levelling Up Funding. This bid was successful and led to a new Margate Digital Campus to expand the creative department at EKC Broadstairs College, right in the heart of Thanet’s artistic core. 

The journey has spanned more than 135 years, and is still far from over. While EKC Broadstairs College now sits as part of a wider – Ofsted Outstanding – education group, its history has not been forgotten, and its journey is a true reflection of EKC Group’s current mission to empower communities to develop their economic and social prosperity in a rapidly changing world.  

Learn more about EKC Broadstairs College by visiting their website.