FOUR Newcastle Business School students from Northumbria University have graduated with First Class Honours Degrees.

The students have completed extended work placements with Greggs as part of their studies. To add to the good news, they have also secured full-time jobs with the UK’s leading bakery retailer.

All four graduates were studying on the Newcastle Business School Business Leadership and Corporate Management Course (BLaCM), which includes a two-year paid placement as part of a richly focussed work-based learning approach. Hannah Casey-Burnett, Lewis Calvey, Will Forster and Lewis Blakey have now all taken up high profile management roles and are based in Greggs’ North-East headquarters.

Presenting her experience of the programme at Newcastle Business School this week, Hannah Casey-Burnett, 22, from Stockton, said: “Completing the degree has been hard work and you do need a lot of drive and ambition, but it has also been an amazing opportunity which I have loved.” During her placement, Hannah was given challenging tasks including managing an employee opinion survey covering 20,000 staff, and completed an intensive training programme to recruit shop managers for London. She has now been promoted to a trainee product manager.

The BLaCM course has a high entry requirement of ABB at A level and is designed to develop students’ capacity and confidence as independent and self-directed learners and clearly demonstrates the University ambition to develop distinctive and highly capable employable leaders of the future.