10:19am Friday 5th February 2010
Norman Scouler has gone from factory worker to chef, thanks to a catering apprenticeship.
Steve Pratt hears about the benefits of learning on the job and why the scheme could help more unemployed people.
NORMAN SCOULER is The Apprentice.
Not the one from the TV show in which would-be entrepreneurs tackle business tasks in the hope of winning a job in Alan Sugar’s organisation.
The father-of-two from Sunderland is a catering apprentice, splitting his time between training to be a chef at New College Durham and learning on the job at a pub in West Rainton, County Durham.
In National Apprenticeship Week, Mr Scouler has come out of the kitchen to talk about his career change and how being an apprentice has enabled him to make the transition from factory worker to professional chef.
He’s not most people’s idea of an apprentice.
At 43, he’s older than many apprentices who are training for their first job on the career ladder.
He became a catering apprentice at New College Durham, after quitting factory work at MKL, in Sunderland, a Nissan supplier specialising in vehicle interiors. Before that he lived in London, doing bar work for seven years without any particular career thoughts.
“After ten years of factory work I decided to change my lot and take a total shift of direction,”
he says.
“Cooking was something I had thought about in the past, but the opportunity never arose. I settled into the factory job and carried on with that.
“For most of my adult life, I’ve cooked at home and at 43 I thought I really needed to get some sort of proper qualifications.
“When I was looking at courses, I was just thinking of doing something part-time. My wife went back to work full-time and I was going to look after the kids. But the more I went into it, an apprenticeship seemed like the right way to go. It did come as a bit of a shock – it’s like going back to school. But I’m working in a restaurant kitchen, so I’m hands-on.”
Catering apprenticeships can be quite hard to find, he says. He looked at different kitchens and colleges and decided that New College was the best for his needs.
He divides his time between four days working and learning on the job at the Three Horseshoes and a day studying at college, where he also cooks in the restaurant.
“It can be tough in the kitchen at the Three Horseshoes. It’s quite a busy place and can be a bit hectic, but I enjoy it and I’m involved in everything,” says Mr Scouler.
He’s studying for his level two catering qualifications and plans to study for level three, which is more about supervising and running a kitchen.
“It’s different from being a student in that because you’re not just based in college all the time, you get on-the-job experience. I do learn about cooking working in the pub restaurant and I’m not there just to make up numbers.”
Being an apprentice has meant some reorganisation of his home life, which he shares with wife Valerie and their two children, aged two and six. She returned to work full-time to allow him to retrain and his shifts have been arranged to allow him to get the kids up and off to school in the morning after his wife has left for work.
National Aprenticeship Week aims to raise awareness of the scheme which can tailor apprenticeships to suit particular businesses and is relevant to what they do.
Students can learn, work, earn a wage and gain a qualification all at the same time.
APPRENTICESHIPS Minister Kevin Brennan says that the past year has seen a record increase in the number of people starting an apprenticeship. “Skills will be the key to the recovery of the UK economy and apprentices can be vital to businesses looking to innovate and grow,” he says.
“Last year 143,000 people completed an apprenticeship, helping to give them the skills and experience they need to get on at work>”
Events across the North-East are marking National Apprenticeship Week – from the setting up of the North-East Apprenticeship Company, which aims to create 1,360 apprentices at smaller businesses across the region to help cut youth unemployment and combat the region’s skills shortage, to apprentices taking over at the hairdressing academy at Newcastle College.
New College Durham staged The Apprenticeship Fashion Show, based around the fashion guru Gok Wan. The aim was to involve all the college’s apprentices, including those from construction, hairdressing, catering and electrical installation. The wider aim was to highlight the range of careers that are accessible through the apprenticeship programme.
One spin-off from the week-long compaign is that £700,000 has been given to councils to cultivate 175 horticultural apprenticeships.
TV gardener and presenter Alan Titchmarsh, a former apprentice with Ilkley Council, said the practical skills provided by apprenticeships are as important as university degrees. “This country needs a new generation of gardeners and I’m delighted more budding horticulturalists will soon be able to sign up to this popular scheme,” he says.
And the good news for Norman Scouler is that the gamble to switch jobs and get an apprenticeship has paid off – he’s been offered a job at the Three Horseshoes after his course.
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