Industry must sing the same old song

Education, education, education. Hang on, didn't the Editor begin his Opinion with that battle cry only a few weeks ago? Is he trying to catch us out by repeating the same comment piece, like a television rerun of Dad's Army? Does he think that we won't notice? No, not exactly.

The trouble is, the problems associated with providing a balanced educational infrastructure for the hospitality industry in the UK simply won't go away - despite the platitudinous murmurings of the Government.

Last week we urged readers to take satisfied stock of the continued discourse between government officials and the leaders of catering, tourism and hospitality, but also to seek action as well as words. A quick trawl through the magazine this week will tell you why.

On the one hand we find that a famous northern brewery is planning almost to double the number of its branded pub outlets over the next year, thus creating an estimated 5,000 new jobs; while on the other hand we hear that City College in Norwich, which runs a 1,000-student hotel school, is having to get rid of its principal lecturers and downgrade senior teachers to save £1.5m a year.

It doesn't make sense. The industry is obviously booming, and yet industry training is being forced into recession. And you only have to read the Letters page each week in Caterer to hear about the skills shortage.

David Wood, chief executive of the HCIMA, has brought to our attention the fact that the last Government placed - and the present Government continues to place - hospitality management programmes in the "Part Laboratory and Other High Cost" group of the Higher Education Funding Council for England. This may sound like complicated jargon, but what it means is that hospitality courses in this country are being funded at about £3,900 per student, as opposed to the more realistic rate of £5,200 for undergraduates in the "Laboratory Science and Engineering Subjects" group.

Furthermore, researcher David Smith at Anderley Associates, who contributed to the government-funded task force looking at catering education, points out that colleges are being forced more and more to be "cost-effective". No one likes to see wasted resource in education but, in practical terms, these measures mean that many craft courses have been reduced from 30-36 hours per week to as little as 14-18 hours. How can this level of teaching possibly be enough to provide students with the skills necessary to fill, for example, any of the senior positions included in those 5,000 new jobs?

If the Government is going to take hospitality seriously as an industry, it has to pay proper attention to hospitality training and raise the funding, not reduce it. As the Beatles sang in the 1960s: "Give me money, that's what I want."

And Opinion next week: something completely different. Perhaps.

Forbes Mutch

Editor

Caterer & Hotelkeeper