National Film And Television School Given Degree Awarding Capabilities

The U.K.’s National Film And Television School (NFTS) has been given degree awarding powers (DAPs) by the Office of Students (OfS). The landmark achievement will allow the school to herald in a new era which started from the 1st January 2023.

For 20 years the school has been giving out Masters of Arts degrees to students. Degrees that were actually from the Royal College of Art. The new accomplishment will now allow NFTS to cater their courses under their own guidelines and cater to the constantly changing film, gaming, and TV sector. The school is well renowned as an institution that provides high standards of training for skilled talent across the spectrum – including leadership positions – in the creative industries. NFTS has always had a consistent cohort of international students as well as locally placed U.K. pupils.

The U.K.’s Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) conducted a lengthy investigation to assess the quality of NFTS’ educational services to make sure there was a trusted framework and structure for degrees to be worth their stature from the school.

On the accomplishment, Jon Wardle, Director of the National Film and Television School said: “I am absolutely thrilled that we now have the right to award degrees in our own name for the first time in 2023. We are extremely grateful to the Royal College of Art for their support and would like to thank them for our long-standing partnership over the past two decades. This is another major milestone for the NFTS and is testament to the hard work of staff who have worked tirelessly to help us achieve our goal of gaining greater flexibility to meet the needs of the industry.”

In a move to expand and develop the U.K.’s desire to generate global partnerships the school also recently partnered with Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) to offer a course in virtual production to make cross border collaboration easier in a quickly advancing technological space.

Dr Kent Ingle, the President of Southeastern University in the United States opined that it was a major step for an institution to grab control of its own future.

“Visionary leaders don’t succeed with just great ideas. They succeed because they’ve built a framework that inspires others and provides their teams with the necessary tools to perform. That framework needs to be taught somewhere, and in an environment where future job perspectives and opportunities are changing at a lightening pace we need to be quick to respond so we, as educators, are assisting our young people to become the best version of themselves in this landscape.”

He continued, “I remember interviewing Dr. Alveda King recently on my Framework Leadership podcast. She is the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and currently serves as the Chair of the Center for the American Dream at America First Policy Institute (AFPI). We discussed the importance of providing opportunities to create lasting change in educational formats and I think this move from NFTS will provide students both nationally and internationally with the opportunity to help set up future organizations for success across numerous fields.”

Lord David Puttnam, the Lifetime President of the National Film and Television School added a historical perspective to the achievement commenting: “This spectacularly good news represents the final lap in a journey that started in 1972. To many, the very idea of a ‘film school’ seemed an extravagant oddity while today it’s an essential component of any 21st century creative economy. Committed staff and students, too numerous to mention, are responsible for this success. I only wish Jennie Lee, the Minister who fought to turn an early post-war dream into a reality, together with Colin Young, the school’s inspirational Founding Director were here to celebrate this achievement.”

With the historic and persisting development of the creative industries around the world coupled with more collaboration cross-borders than ever before, the need is greater than ever to provide bespoke courses that will elevate and make a tangible difference in the media and entertainment marketplaces for years to come.