Think Again special issue
“Traditionally, employers have looked to education and colleges to provide their workforce. We are saying it won’t happen in the future. Talent is not being grown here” Peter Jones
T
he decrease in funding for further educa- tion colleges, educational strategies that are not fit for industry purpose, a lack of recognition of hospitality as a rewarding career and the difficulty of attracting switched- on teachers with industry experience are just a few of the issues feeding the skills shortage, say professors David Foskett and Peter Jones. Internationally, the UK is falling behind in providing applied, practical learning. The only institution that comes close, they reckon, is the Edge Hotel School, the UK’s first school in a commercial hotel, Wivenhoe House. And they are urging the industry to not only support the school, but pledge resources to replicate the model across the country through Hotel Future, an education and training initiative to establish hotels with education and training at the core of the commercial activity.
8 | The Caterer They are not alone in this thinking.
Chef Cyrus Todiwala has written an open let- ter, demanding: “The industry needs to get off its backside and get involved head on and tackle Britain’s chef and wider hospitality and catering HR problems for the future.” Foskett and Jones couldn’t have put it more succinctly. With decades of experience in the industry and in education, the pair despair that the government is willing or able to help. “We need to think about this differently,”
urges Jones. “Traditionally, employers have looked to education and colleges to provide their workforce. We are saying it won’t happen in the future. Talent is not being grown here. The way employees have got round the skills shortage has been by recruit- ing from the rest of Europe, where the educa- tion system is different.”
www.thecaterer.com
PHOTOGRAPHY BY ADRIAN FRANKLIN, HOSPITALITY MEDIA
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