The conundrum for craft college students

Today is a day which has great bearing on this industry. It is the day GCSE examinations results are published.

Can you make the connection? You may if you care about the standard of candidates entering the industry from schools. You certainly will make the connection if you are a catering college lecturer, aware that the next few weeks will determine the quality of your student intake.

If the intake isn't right, then life is going to be difficult for the college. And likely as not, a contribution will be made to the long-standing criticism that colleges produce lousy students these days.

All those people who say colleges teach the wrong things, produce a low standard of student, particularly craft students, have out-of-touch chefs who would never make it in a real kitchen as lecturers, will be lining up their sights once again.

There are colleges and lecturers of whom such criticism, sadly, is not misplaced. Yet they are in a minority. If there is a poorer standard of student coming out of catering colleges these days it is not always the fault of the colleges. A large proportion of the blame lies with the education system.

For those who despair at the lacklustre abilities of the students who qualify from our colleges, it would be illuminating to consider the very beginning of student recruitment - our schools. This would show clearly that catering is still regarded by careers departments as the place of last resort for those young people who, to put it bluntly, are unemployable elsewhere.

Mad Billy and dizzy Sharon are still seen by many schools as suitable for the hospitality industry if their exam results are a mess. Cheer up, luvvie, you can always be a chef.

So why do catering colleges accept these young people so readily? It would be nice to say the reason is altruistic; to give under-achievers the best opportunity to make something of their lives.

But that isn't the reason. Courses cost money and if they are to run, then they have to be full. Otherwise they may face the threat of closure.

Time was when young people who entered full-time study at a catering college were eager to join the industry. But that was when most young people who left school at 16 or 18 could get a job without much effort.

There are precious few jobs for school-leavers anymore. Available jobs naturally go to the most able, while the remainder are faced with doing nothing and going nowhere or going on a vocational course where there is a slim possibility of employment when the course ends.

I don't want to be political, but there is another reason why the young unemployed are pressed into craft colleges: in full time education, they aren't counted as an unemployment statistic.

No wonder college lecturers despair at some of the students they receive. Come to think of it, I don't suppose its much fun for the professionally-minded students on the same course either. The sad truth is that while an employer has complete control over who they employ, catering colleges have no choice.

There's worse to come. The saddest student recruitment story I have heard recently came from a college lecturer who, determined to improve the standard of students and the image of the courses he taught, decided to visit local schools and talk to 16-year-olds. He wanted to reach the bright young people who were being steered into careers other than catering.

He planned an impressive audio-visual presentation, and had invited a couple of young people working in the industry to explain what fun it was, that promotion was fast and the working conditions were nothing like the horror stories they had probably heard.

His idea was strangled almost at birth. He was told such ideas were out of order. All the college's training courses had to be presented equally by the college marketing department.

The notion of one department making a separate, spirited presentation to local schools was preposterous. This explains why it is the system which is failing this industry, not the catering colleges. So what is the answer? Sorry, I haven't a clue. n