page_title: MidKent College
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: MidKent College / History
caption_attribution_description: English: The Duke of Edinburgh meets Medway College of Technology students as he opens the college's Horsted site in 1955
context_page_description: MidKent College is a further education college in Kent, England. It runs courses from two separate campuses in Maidstone and Medway, including a number of higher education courses.
  There are approximately 8,500 students aged 16 years and upwards enrolled at the college. Courses offered range from pre-entry level to degree level and cover a wide range of vocational and academic subject areas.
context_section_description: The college has been delivering vocational education in Medway and Maidstone for nearly 100 years. Its roots lie in the technical institutes established within the Medway towns in the 1890s and Maidstone around 1918.
  The college first began delivering courses from the Horsted Centre in Chatham in 1954. The site was opened as Medway College of Technology by the Duke of Edinburgh on 5 April the following year.
  Medway College of Technology and Maidstone Technical College amalgamated in 1966 to become Medway and Maidstone College of Technology. The purpose-built City Way site in Rochester was subsequently opened as an additional college site in 1968.
  The college changed its name to Mid-Kent College of Higher and Further Education in 1978, before dropping the hyphen and space and the latter part of its title to become MidKent College in October 2008.
  Throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s, the college's students were famed for their Rag Day parade. This saw them conducting a carnival procession through the Medway Towns. The parade started at Gillingham train station and ended at the esplanade in Rochester. Each year the students elected their own "Rag Day Queen" to head the procession.
caption: The Duke of Edinburgh visits the college's electronics department as he opens the Horsted site
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