A COLLEGE is celebrating an increase in students after rethinking its marketing methods.

Until recently, New College Durham relied on traditional prospectuses to attract students.

Now, after redesigning the guide in a newspaper format and distributing copies to 165,000 homes, more people have signed up for part-time courses.

The college's customer services manager, Paul Ryder, said: "Since we made the change, there have been more people at our information and enrolment days and more people actually undertaking our part-time courses as well."

The college offers a wide range of mostly free part-time courses, in subjects including embroidery, computing, professional courses and A-levels.

Mr Ryder said: "We have a strong community ethos and many of our courses are run near where people live, in places like village halls and community association buildings.

"One major benefit of our new way of doing things is that our guide has been delivered to people who might never have thought of setting foot across the threshold of a college to take a course.