Innovative teacher training

C. F. Mott College of Education and COLCHE (The City of Liverpool College of Higher Education)

C.F. Mott Training College was founded after the Second World War to address the national shortage of trained teachers.

The College was named after a distinguished Director of Education of the City of Liverpool, Charles Francis Mott. Under the Government’s Board of Education, the College was initially a member of a consortium of training colleges managed by Liverpool and Manchester Universities, and awarded Certificates in Education.

It survived many changes and developments over its 40-year history, including going from being women-only to co-educational in the early 1960s, and diversifying from teacher training to a wider portfolio of honours degree courses in the arts, humanities, social sciences and science. The College was noted for its strength in sociology, which would later support degrees in media studies, journalism and criminology at Liverpool Polytechnic. Drama, English, history, art and craft, psychology and geography were also key subjects.

C.F. Mott was one of the largest institutions that eventually merged with Liverpool Polytechnic in 1983. The merger brought many new areas of expertise to the Polytechnic, notably in the arts and humanities, including English, Cultural History, Media, Criminology, Drama, as well as strengthening established areas such as Psychology, Sociology, Art and Design and Geography.

The University continues to innovate in these disciplines, now offering an extensive portfolio of undergraduate and postgraduate degrees spanning the arts, humanities and social sciences. Research in the humanities and social sciences also continues to grow, with particular expertise in literature, history, policing studies, criminology and journalism.