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People are turning to vocational courses like cookery for a fulfi lling career WORDS MORAG BOOTLAND IMAGE ANGUS BLACKBURN
Fiona Burrell set up The Edinburgh New Town Cookery School in 2005 in an impressive building in the city centre. Burrell runs day and evening cookery classes, teaching cookery skills, but it is the diploma courses which are proving overwhelming popular. ‘We enrol school and university leavers, people
looking for a career change and even those who are taking a sabatical from their job to improve their lives,’ she says. ‘Of these students each one sits
exams and fi nishes with a diploma certifi cate, even if they are taking the course for pleasure rather than career advancement.’ Passing on her knowledge and witnessing the
‘progression of people’ are the most rewarding aspects of the job for Fiona, who has already seen her students progress to placements at Heston Blumenthal’s, The Fat Duck and jobs at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in London.