Hospitality

Stephen Hyde, Lead Practitioner, Westminster Kingsway College, London
Gerry Bamber, Lead Practitioner, Westleigh High School, Wigan
Level 3 Learners, Westminster Kingsway College, London
Rene Dee, CEO, The Westminster Collection, London
Karen Groves, Practitioner, Westminster Kingsway College, London

Narrator: Work experience on the Diploma in Hospitality can be approached in a variety of ways and consortia may choose to offer learners a range of opportunities to make up the ten day requirement.

Female: You can see it's a different shape to what we have next door, because this is a more formal restaurant.

Narrator: Westminster Kingsway College are able to use their in-house facilities to fulfil part of this requirement for learners across the consortium. They refer to this as "experiential learning".

Stephen Hyde: The experiential learning undertaken within a college, or within a school, is very, very important, because it is setting the scene for the student to be able to go to the work placement or to progress into employment. Seeing the aspect from both sides of the table, as it were. So, the student realises the requirements of a customer and the requirements of the worker, basically.

Narrator: For Westleigh High School in Wigan, a close relationship with an adjacent community centre which is partly run by the school, has supplied regular work experience opportunities over a number of years.

Gerry Bamber: When it comes to the Diploma work, we would look at them doing more observation and tracking of people and shadowing for people within their roles. I mean, customer service and things like that is part of the Diploma.

Sarah: Good morning, Westleigh Teaching and Community Centre. Sarah speaking.

Gerry Bamber: The potential is incredible, really, when you think about it. And you've got to seize every opportunity.

Narrator: In preparation for their Diploma program, Westminster Kingsway has also worked on developing an established relationship with a local employer.

Level 3 Learner: You've got an event for the Westminster Collection which is a group of about 30 different conference events companies. And they're having a showcase where they're showing off their sites to potential companies. As Hospitality students they've come to us to ask us to manage the event and make all the food. As well as managing onsite on the day.

Level 3 Learner: As a learning experience, I think it's been excellent. It's not only the small things that you learn, but on a grander scale, you learn sort of, like, the scale, how big these events can become and how much work is put in and how valuable a reliable person can be as well.

Level 3 Learner: I've done a work placement before. It was in a hotel environment. But I think this has sort of taught us more because it's almost more on an independent scale with assistance when required. Rather than always assistance and then you're not really able to use your own initiative. And just learning all the different aspects has been amazing.

Level 3 Learner: Our whole class, we had to get in, pair off and make food for the event, present it to the board of the Westminster Collection and... ours won.

Level 3 Learner: I'm looking forward to seeing when all the customers get in, seeing how it goes. See if they're happy or not. Just get feedback from them and see how we did.

Narrator: Events of this size and complexity offer a wide variety of work experience opportunities, which can count towards the ten day requirement on the Diploma. In this case, regular contact with the employer helped to familiarise learners with working practices across all areas of event planning and management.

Rene Dee: Literally, four months quite detailed and hard work has gone into the realisation of this event. All of the detailed planning, the theory, the recognition of the objectives, the understanding of how to implement it. And then, of course, the actual day itself and taking part in it. Handling registration, serving food and fronting up to real clients coming in to a showcase and I think it's fantastic. I really do.

Karen Groves: We've had people give business cards. They would like us to go and work with them and take it further. And we've had offers of work placement, so this could be so useful to us in so many ways. And I hope the Westminster Collection are as happy with the result as I am at the moment, anyway.

Rene Dee: Give recognition to these guys here from Westminster Kingsway College.

Level 3 Learner: Then actually, when he did the thank you at the end, sort of made us feel what we had done...with the Chief Exec to say thank you in front of all those people made us feel as if we had really pulled it off... really good.

Level 3 Learner: And it's a great sense of achievement as well. Because obviously we've been integral in it since the beginning and so to see it through and ...

Level 3 Learner: From October 'til right now.

Level 3 Learner: ...'til right now, it feels like a big achievement and so we're really happy that it's turned out well.

END