Gain skills and experience in an actual paid job while studying for a degree without any tuition fees.
The number of people taking degree apprenticeships is continuing to rise.
According to GOV.UK, the number starting degree apprenticeships in 2022-23 was up by 14 per cent to 20,060 compared to the previous academic year.
Increasingly, students and apprentices at Capital City College Group (CCCG) are looking to degree apprenticeships as an alternative to full-time study at university to get the skills for their career.
So, what are degree apprenticeships and what are the benefits?
Degree apprenticeships are actual jobs that enable you gain a degree while you work, typically spending 80 per cent of your time at work and 20 per cent studying at university.
Note that degree apprenticeships in Scotland are called graduate apprenticeships and in Northern Ireland most higher apprenticeships are only up to Level 5, the equivalent of a foundation degree.
Degree apprenticeships are open to all ages and entry requirements are similar to those for university, such as A Levels or an equivalent Level 3 qualification or apprenticeship. However, it is also likely you will have to go through an application process and attend an interview with the employer.
There are certain professions where you cannot take a degree apprenticeship, such as a doctor, but there are so many areas where you can. These include accounting, business, construction, engineering, law, nursing, agriculture, hospitality and IT.
While you will not get the full experience of going to university, you will be able to apply what you are learning in a real work environment, gain knowledge from people already working in the sector and learn additional skills.
Apprenticeships are also an opportunity to impress an employer who might take you on after you have completed your training. They are also a chance to develop soft skills all employers want including leadership, teamwork, decision making, time management and problem solving.
He saw the fact that the apprenticeship was giving him a career and an education as a real advantage in the industry, not to mention his employer would be paying his tuition fees.
“I’m interested in many different aspects of IT. On the one hand I’m interested in the hardware side, but since I’ve been at IBM I’ve been shown some new aspects of software and cloud-based technology that I never knew about, which has also piqued my interest,” he said.
Imtiyaz, whose interest in tech began at an early age. explained that his diploma at CANDI gave him a realistic expectation of what it would be like to work in IT.
“This is a potential career opportunity at a great company that’s well known within the industry, which will give me the skills and experience over the next three years that I might not get just at university,” he said.
CCCG does not offer degree apprenticeships but we do offer a range of apprenticeships from Level 2 to Level 5 with many large companies, which can lead to progression with them at a higher level. More than half of apprentices on our Surveying Technician Level 3 Apprenticeship progress to a degree apprenticeship with their employer.
Finding a degree apprenticeship is easy. Employers advertise for them on their own websites, GOV.UK, Linkedin, job boards and other recruitment sites as well as university websites.
Find out about more about our courses and apprenticeships here.
According to the British Medical Association (BMA), work placements are an essential step to securing a place at any UK medical school with institutions looking for students with a range of healthcare experience.
Here’s our top 10 tips on how to gain work placements and make the most of the experience:
You can get placements in a range of healthcare settings from GP practices to hospitals and even internationally. Bear in mind a lot of people will be looking to gain similar experience, so apply early for as many opportunities as possible to make sure you get a good placement.
Get in touch with GP practice managers and explain who you are and ask them about placements and how they can help you gain experience. If you can’t shadow a doctor, look to other healthcare professionals, such as pharmacists and physiotherapists.
Make the most of your contacts, such as relatives, friends and neighbours, who work in hospitals or other parts of the healthcare sector.
Speak to your teachers and careers advisers who can help you find placements. At CCCG, we work with dozens of employers in healthcare to provide opportunities for our students to gain experience and learn from those working in the sector, as well as support with UCAS applications.
Look at opportunities for experience at medical schools like Brighton and Sussex Medical School, which offers a six-week virtual work experience programme. While not designed to completely replace in-person placements in the real world, this course gives an insight into medicine and being a doctor. The course introduces students to the NHS and different medical roles including the key skills needed to work in those areas and challenges they face.
The BMA does not encourage healthcare professionals to charge students for placements, although there may be instances where you could be asked to cover costs such as administration. Don’t be afraid to ask if there are any costs you need to pay.
Dress smartly when on your placement, explain what you would like to gain from the experience and what you would like to learn while you are there. Ask questions with enthusiasm to a diverse mix of staff to give you a great insight into healthcare.
Talk politely to patients and remember that confidentiality is important and under no circumstances discuss their issues outside the organisation where you are on placement. Don’t take it personally if a patient wishes to be seen without a student present.
Keep a diary of what you did and saw each day, which can help solidify what you learn and be an important reference tool when you come to writing your UCAS personal statement and preparing for medical school interviews.
Finally, here’s a list of other organisations that can help with finding work placements:
A British Airways flight attendant has told how his career took off after studying at the College of Haringey, Enfield and North East London (CONEL)
Leandro Addivinola, 32, secured a job with the airline in February 2022 during the first year of his Travel and Tourism Level 3 Diploma and undertook four weeks training in May.
He joined the cabin crew for Euroflyer, a subsidiary of BA based at Gatwick airport, and is now working on long-haul flights out of Heathrow while completing the second year of his course.
Leandro, who was born and raised in Italy, said: “I’m really happy and proud of myself because when I think back seven years ago I could barely speak English, and now I’m working for BA, the national carrier of the United Kingdom. It’s a big achievement for me.
“I’ve flown to Turkey, Morrow, Greece and Cyprus. I’m still very excited and hope to stay in BA and grow. This is just the start for me.”
Leandro was born in Naples and grew up in Perugia where he studied for a degree in social sciences at university before coming to UK in 2015.
“After my degree, I looked for a job for around six months but didn’t find anything because the economic situation in Italy was not good, so I decided to come to the UK and find a job,” he said.
Leandro worked in a restaurant making pizzas and then as a waiter as his English improved before an eight-month spell as a pastry chef in Ibiza in 2018 and then returning to London.
“I wanted a better career. I didn’t want to work in restaurants for the rest of my life, so I decided to restart,” he said.
“The travel sector had always fascinated me. I liked the idea of travelling and working at the same time and I also wanted to improve my English. I also knew about hospitality from working in the restaurant.”
Leandro, who now lives in Wood Green, enrolled on a Travel and Tourism Level 2 Certificate in September 2020 and progressed to Level 3 the following year.
He applied to BA in November 2021 after seeing an advert for cabin crew on Instagram and was offered a job after an interview and assessment day held virtually due to COVID.
“It’s a very gratifying and rewarding job. You get paid to travel the world and meet lots of people from different cultures and learn a lot every day,” he said.
Leandro praised his teachers at CONEL who had not only taught him about the industry but how to apply what he had learnt to real situations.
“The course work is designed to give you the skills you need to apply in the job every day,” said Leandro.
“The teachers are really supportive. Every time you have the issue or don’t understand something you can ask them for help. I have learnt so much, and I’m still learning.”
Find out more about Travel and Tourism courses at CONEL and apply here.
Colleges Week is a celebration of students, staff and skills from 17-21 October #LoveOurColleges
City and Islington College (CANDI) works with Career Ready to give students fantastic work placements, mentoring and support for their future careers. A Level student Nayyan Iftikhar shares what she learnt during a four-week paid internship with youth education charity Global Generation and how it opened her eyes to the sector. Nayyan’s placement was supported by Bupa Foundation.
Determined to make the most of the opportunity
I was very nervous before my internship with Global Generation as I had no prior work experience, but I was determined to make the most of the opportunity. I enjoyed working with a range of different teams including the gardening team, accounting and finance, and the youth programme.
Learning about the charity sector
This internship was an eyeopener. Until I worked at a charity, I didn’t realise that you could make such a difference to others through your job. The best part of my internship was connecting with young people and seeing the impact the work I was doing had on them. I want to go into media production in the future and now I know that I could also work on projects that are important to me, like climate change and helping young people, by working alongside organisations in the charity sector.
A great opportunity
Internship opportunities are important because they give young people an opportunity to understand the working world and allow us think about what we might like to do in the future. To anyone thinking about joining the Career Ready programme – do it! It’s a great opportunity to network, meet and get advice from professionals, learn about the workplace and what career pathways are out there.
Each year CANDI offers a wide range of career and enrichment opportunities through organisations like Career Ready and the college’s own network of employers and connections across London.
By Jackie Chapman, Managing Director, Capital City College Training
For years we have heard the same line: ‘the apprenticeship levy doesn’t work’ – whether that’s because of the disengagement of Small and Medium Enterprises (SME apprenticeship starts are half what they were before the levy was introduced), the drop in apprenticeship uptake by 16-18-year-olds, or the amount of unused levy returned to the Treasury (according to the Financial Times, employers have handed back more than £3bn in unspent levy cash over the last three years).
This is ineffective for the economy and unhelpful for the workforce. Apprenticeships should be a central part of the employment landscape for people of all ages. They are a genuine alternative to T Levels or university for many young people who are eager to start their careers sooner or learn on the job; and they are invaluable for adults already in the workforce, who want to develop new skills and qualifications without having to give up work to study.
But apprenticeship starts are now far lower than before the levy was introduced back in 2017. What can be done to reverse this? How can apprenticeships become popular again?
Recently, we attended the Labour and Conservative party conferences, where we hosted breakfast events with the London advocacy group BusinessLDN – discussions with our guests addressed apprenticeships and other pressing skills challenges.
As we see it, the apprenticeships challenge is threefold: firstly, how apprenticeships are promoted – especially to young people; secondly, how they are funded; and thirdly, how flexible they are – for employers, educators and apprentices.
Promotion
If young people don’t know about apprenticeships, we can’t expect them to be interested in them. Many schools have failed to effectively point their 14–17-year-olds towards apprenticeships, as academic routes remain a central focus for schools.
The ‘Baker Clause’ should help this. Originally an amendment to the Technical and Further Education Act 2017 which was widely ignored by schools, the Baker Clause was made law in the Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022. It requires schools to allow colleges and training providers access to every student in years 8 to 13 to discuss non-academic routes. It also states that schools need to impartially promote the full range of technical education qualifications and apprenticeships to their pupils.
The Baker Clause is an important part of a school or college’s careers education, information, advice and guidance (CEIAG) programme and, provided it is followed and enforced, it should widen pupils’ access to information about apprenticeships and other non-academic routes.
The introduction of T Levels may cause more confusion, so the message needs to be clear that apprenticeships are 80% in the workplace, whilst T Levels are 80% learning.
Funding and flexibility
The apprenticeship levy is the main mechanism for funding apprenticeships. Some £3.3 billion of unspent levy money has been returned to the Treasury over the last 3 years, so it’s fair to say that the level of funding is more than adequate.
Flexibility – what the levy money can be spent on and who can spend it – is where many of the problems, and opportunities, are. Businesses and apprenticeship providers have been calling on the Government to offer greater flexibility around the levy for years, but how would this look? And how would it work?
How do we improve the levy and encourage more apprenticeship starts?
It’s encouraging to see the Government responding to the sector’s conversations about the levy. In February of this year, Alex Burghart MP (then Skills Minister) introduced flexi-job apprenticeships and announced that businesses could transfer their surplus levy to other businesses to pay for their apprenticeship training.
Flexi-job apprenticeships aim to help sectors with short-term contracts to take on apprentices. Within this model, apprentices will be supported by their training provider to obtain multiple short-term contracts across different employers to complete their apprenticeship requirements.
We have already seen the benefits of this for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) at CCCG’s training arm, Capital City College Training (CCCT). For instance, in the creative industry, CCCT have been working in partnership with the NextGen Skills Academy to enable SMEs who only focus on one key skill to cluster together to take on an apprentice. Each apprentice is subsequently able to learn each skill through a different business to complete their apprenticeship.
These initiatives are a positive step forward for helping to increase the number of apprenticeships, but there is a more fundamental issue for many employers which needs addressing – the cost of wages.
Employers tell us that they are deterred from taking on apprentices because they must pay their wages while the apprentice is still relatively inexperienced, especially when taking on 16–18-year-olds. In addition, many employers want to pay their apprentices more than the National Minimum Wage, because it’s the right thing to do and it would encourage more people to become apprentices.
So, we think that employers should also be able to use their levy funds to pay between half and two-thirds of their apprentices’ wage costs for the first year of their time with the company. Covering most of the salary for this period will help some employers pay their apprentices more and would be a powerful incentive to smaller businesses, as an extra pair of hands at a subsidised cost would never go amiss!
A levy reform along these lines could be structured like the Government’s Kickstart Scheme, released in September 2020. Kickstart provided funding to employers to create jobs for 16- to 24-year-olds on Universal Credit, covering 100% of the National Minimum Wage – based on the workers’ age – for 25 hours per week.
By supporting employers with their wage costs in the short term, Kickstart enabled many small businesses to engage with young people and provide adequate support whilst they were developing their basic skills.
If the levy allowed for the funding of such a scheme, a valuable proportion of the apprentice’s salary would be paid until the they become skilled enough to not need continuous supervision – the reason why employers prefer to employ individuals who have sufficient skills to undertake the job. This flexibility will encourage employers to take on apprentices and will guarantee the apprentice a job at the end.
We’d also like to see levy flexibility go further, by allowing the transfer of the apprenticeship levy to the organisation that provides the apprenticeship training (typically a further education college or a private provider), so they can continue to support an apprentice when they change jobs – currently as soon as an apprentice ends their studies or changes employer, the provider can no longer support them. This initiative will also help boost apprenticeship completion rates, as apprentices are currently leaving at the point of triggering the End Point Assessment. Such a change would not cost anyone money, will allow colleges and training providers to use their unspent Levy funds, and will decrease the administration required for providers to sign up additional employers to support the final stages of an individual’s apprenticeship.
Apprenticeships can and should be a bigger part of the employment landscape. We think that increasing the flexibility of the levy will allow more employers take on more apprentices and will encourage more people to consider an apprenticeship. We’ll be advocating for these changes to the levy over the coming months.
What is the apprenticeship levy? And what are the problems with it?
The apprenticeship levy was introduced in 2017 to create long term sustainable funding for apprenticeships. The levy is a 0.5% tax paid by larger employers (those with an annual pay bill of more than £3 million), which is stored in a fund and must be used to pay for the cost of apprenticeship training.
The idea was that the levy would encourage businesses to offer more apprenticeships, but unfortunately, the number of people starting an apprenticeship has fallen by around 50% since the levy was introduced. It also had some unintended consequences. For example, the House of Lords’ Youth Unemployment Reportfound that some employers use the levy to reshape existing roles into apprenticeships, benefitting those who already work for their company and are usually older and more experienced.
Other criticisms are that because the levy is only paid by large companies, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) don’t pay it but have to use the online system to engage with providers and pay 5% to the cost of the apprenticeship. In addition, the apprenticeship system is considered too complicated and hard to navigate for employers and education providers alike. Perhaps because of these flaws, the number of SME apprenticeships has fallen since the levy started.
When Tyler Minter became a dad in March last year he was keen to find a career that offered job security for the future. He explains how a Rail Engineering apprenticeship with Alstom and the College of Haringey, Enfield and North East London (CONEL) has put him on the right line for a successful career.
Tyler Minter has endured many sleepless nights during his Rail Engineering apprenticeship.
But it’s not understanding the technical training or the thought of assignment deadlines that are keeping him awake, it’s being the proud dad of an 18-month-old baby girl.
Tyler, 24, worked briefly as a machinist for an engineering company after college before enrolling on a BEng (Hons) Aeronautics and Astronautics at university but he left after a year.
For a while he stepped in to help with the family business selling vehicles for a couple of years, during which time his fiancée Nicole became pregnant. But a week before their daughter Elsie-Rose was born in March 2021 a change in his family’s circumstances meant Tyler was forced to find a new job.
Keen to find a career that would provide a stable future for his family, Tyler began to look at apprenticeships.
“I wanted something with career progression, something that was especially important knowing I was going to become a dad,” said Tyler, who lives with his family in Stondon Massey near Brentwood, Essex.
“I found Alstom and started the long process to get in. I had lots of interviews and tests and was delighted when I was successful and got taken on to do a rail engineering apprenticeship.”
Elsie-Rose was born in March 2021 and three months later Tyler started his Rail Engineering Level 3 Apprenticeship with Alstom and the College of Haringey, Enfield and North East London (CONEL).
Alstom is a global rail engineering company that constructs and undertakes maintenance of trains, signalling and other rail infrastructure, and employs 75,000 people.
Tyler’s apprenticeship initially involved nine months of training at CONEL with a salary of £20,000 a year before spending four days a week at a rail depot and one day at college.
Tyler has just started his second year and is now a huge advocate of apprenticeships and the benefits they offer to those looking for a career.
“I love the fact that I’m learning while also getting hands on experience,” he said.
“I’m gaining knowledge that is vital to the job and also putting it to use in a practical sense. I’m also not getting into debt like a lot of people who go to university do, and I’m earning a good salary.”
Undoubtedly, juggling the demands of having a young child and studying has its challenges at times and Tyler has been grateful for the support and encouragement he has received from his tutors.
“When Elsie-Rose needed to go to hospital in April, I called the college and work and explained the situation and they were fantastic. They extended the deadline for my work allowing me more time to complete it.”
Tyler’s apprenticeship offered a guaranteed job on successful completion of his training, which has given him an added incentive to do well.
“As a dad having job security and a future career is a huge draw and is one of the reasons I picked an apprenticeship. We’re also eligible for a pension and private healthcare, things that really matter when you’ve got a family.”
Tyler’s achievements earned him an Excellence Award from Capital City College Group (CCCG), which includes CONEL, along with City and Islington College, Westminster Kingsway College and Capital City College Training.
The UK rail industry is facing a massive skills shortage. In 2020, City & Guilds and the National Skills Academy for Rail (NSAR), revealed 120,000 new workers were needed by the end of the decade.
Find out more about our Rail Engineering apprenticeships here.
The COVID-19 pandemic hit the UK hard – in London alone, unemployment rose to 7% in 2021. Through Levelling up and the skills agenda, the Government have announced a range of initiatives to help the UK recover, supporting people to up-skill and re-skill in the changing job market.
In light of the cost-of-living crisis, the talent-drain that has resulted from the UK’s departure from the EU’s single market and the after-effects on labour markets of the COVID-19 pandemic, boosting Britain’s skills is more important now than ever before. According to research by the accountancy firm BDO, some 26% of businesses say that finding staff with the right skills will be their biggest challenge over the coming months.
Levelling up can play a useful role in this process. Although it’s often categorised as a regional, ‘not in London or the south east’ issue, our experience as London’s largest group of further education colleges tells us that it doesn’t matter where ‘under-skilled’ people live – their needs, and the challenges that they face, are similar. Without key skills (be they, for example, basic literacy and numeracy; digital skills; or even more advanced technical skills to gain work in high-tech industries or the green economy), thousands of people face being left behind, excluded from the workforce and with only a lifetime of poorly paid and insecure work to look forward to.
What is Levelling up?
The Levelling up White Paper, released in February 2022, sets out how the Government plan to spread opportunity throughout the UK. While it is important to challenge geographical inequality in tackling the imbalance we see within the UK, the Government’s Levelling up plans do not take into account the fact that poverty and lack of opportunity is found even in wealthy areas.
The White Paper promises a “moral, social and economic” programme for the Government to follow, to improve opportunities and productivity for many parts of the country, but it does not address the needs of Londoners. London is used in the White Paper as a place of comparison – one with high levels of economic and social standards. Although this is true to a degree, many Londoners live (and learn) in some of the country’s most deprived areas – and this cannot be ignored. So, as well as improving regional inequality, levelling up must also help the most disadvantaged communities within our major cities and towns.
Cost-of-living crisis
The cost-of-living crisis, like Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic before it, highlights again just how important skills are for the people of this country and, if anything, makes the need and demand for new skills even more urgent. With rises in the cost-of-living and a predicted recession on the horizon, more people will lose their jobs and will need to re-skill or up-skill to gain sustainable employment. No community will go untouched.
So what’s to be done?
As well as their Levelling up White Paper, the Government have launched a range of ideas and initiatives in the last 18 months, including Local Skills Improvement Plans (LSIPs). Enshrined in law in the 2022 Skills and Post-16 Education Act, LSIPs are coalitions of education providers, local/mayoral authorities, local businesses and business groups, and other local stakeholders, which will set out the key priorities and changes needed in a local area to allow local post-16 technical education and training provision to be more responsive to the changing needs of the local labour market.
The Government are expecting the roll out of LSIPs to have concluded by 2023 and have set aside £20.9 million for 38 areas including 10 mayoral combined authorities, the Greater London Authority and 27 local enterprise partnership areas. We will see in the next year how these developments progress and if they succeed in helping local businesses fill their skills gaps.
Supporting Further Education colleges to plug the nation’s skills gaps
As London’s largest further education college group, Capital City College Group know the vital role that colleges play in re-skilling and up-skilling their students and the positive impact that this has on their communities, as well as the key role that employers play in our students’ success. We already have strong partnerships with well over 900 employers every year, both through our delivery of apprenticeships and through work placements, paid internships and other activities. We fully intend to work in, or with, London’s Local Skills Improvement Plan, to ensure that the skills we teach are in tune with the needs of London’s labour market – and so that our, and our students’, voices can be heard.
While these recent initiatives are welcome, further education colleges have long been an after-thought for Governments, falling behind schools and Higher Education, both in respect and funding. If the Government is committed in their pledge to level-up the country and improve skills, they must acknowledge further education colleges as a key partner in the delivery of these vital skills and fund the sector accordingly.
Stay-tuned: Party Conferences
In September and October, we will be hosting breakfast events at both the Labour and Conservative Party conferences, where we will continue these discussions, as well as exploring the role of apprenticeships in Levelling up. In partnership with BusinessLDN (previously London First), we have invited key political and sector stakeholders to join us, to share their views on Levelling up and the skills agenda. Keep updated with developments and discussions here, and on our Twitter and LinkedIn feeds.
A former hairdressing student at the College of Haringey, Enfield and North East London (CONEL) has recalled how cutting the new Doctor Whos’ hair led him to work in TV.
Rwandan-born Ncuti Gatwa, 29, was unveiled as the new Time Lord on 8 May and is also set to appear in a Barbie film out next year starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling.
Silas Baiden, 36, cut Ncuti’s hair for the Netflix hit series Sex Education, six years after the pair had become friends when Silas was working for a BT call centre in Scotland.
Silas runs Ama Hair Salon in south Tottenham, which specialises in Afro-Caribbean hair, with his mum Ama who also trained at CONEL and started the business in 2001.
He said: “Ncuti is one of my best friends. We met at a party in Glasgow and I cut his hair when he moved to London and lived with me and my mum for a couple of years.
“When he got a part in Sex Education, he told me that they were looking for a barber. I was fresh out of college at the time and didn’t feel ready to work on a production, but I nervously went to the set, made some connections and they gave me the job.
“I remember having a bit of imposter syndrome, like I’m not supposed to, or don’t deserve to be here, but now I feel I’ve reached another level. In addition to barbering, I can do braids, cornrows and locks, which are still quite niche things in the TV industry.”
Silas also cut and styled hair on set and at the salon for other cast members including Asa Butterfield, Kedar Williams-Stirling, George Robinson, Chinenye Ezeudu, Jonny Amies and Olive Gray.
Silas has gone on to work on Halo, a TV series based on the video game of the same name, for Paramount+ as well as The Mosquito Coast for Apple TV+.
His other famous clients include actors Yasmin Finney, Clifford Samuels, Morgan Rees, Ariyon Bakare and Karla Chrome and singer Henry Dell.
Ama, 57, came to the UK from Ghana in 1990 with Silas when he was just four years old and initially struggled to find work.
She said: “I used to have my own boutique business in Ghana, so being unemployed was foreign to me. The only job I could get was in catering, but that wasn’t my passion.
“I did my own hair and my grandma’s and some friends back home. I always enjoyed the social aspect of the job and making people feel and look good.”
Ama enrolled on a hairdressing course at CONEL, then the College of North East London, in 1992, and worked in a couple of salons in Tottenham before opening her own.
“The teachers showed us how to become fully fledged hairdressers and made us believe in ourselves. They were very experienced and pushed us to be the best we could be,” she said.
“I did placements at Afro and European salons to gain experience with both textures. They didn’t train in Afro hair at the college at the time, but that has changed now, which is good to see.”
Ama has long been an advocate of natural hair, particularly among the Afro-Caribbean community, and has encouraged her clients not to use relaxers or other chemical treatments.
“The death of George Floyd in America and Black Lives Matter has given black people more confidence to be themselves because it is out there that we’re treated differently,” she said.
“We’ve woken up to accept who we are. I see it in young people and I tell them how lucky they are to be free to wear their hair the way they want to.”
When Silas was younger, he would often help his mum out washing clients’ hair at weekend to earn extra pocket money during which time he learnt to plait and blow dry.
“I’ve always unofficially been an employee of my mum. I used to watch the way she and the rest of her staff would transform people in a few hours and create some magic,” he said.
“Working with my mum is awesome. I’m proud that I’ve been able to continue the business and raise the salon’s profile with new ideas and clientele and put it on the map.”
Ama added: “Silas has made so many wonderful changes to the business and we have been able to grow and increase our turnover. We’re now busier than ever.”
You might not end up cutting Doctor Who’s hair or working for Netflix but now is the right time for you to start your career in hairdressing or barbering with CONEL.
With top-quality training salons in our Tottenham and Enfield sites and excellent tuition to help you gain a recognised qualification, a career in this rewarding industry is within your reach.
Following the Government’s announcement on Monday 23 March of more restrictions on people’s movements, all teaching, learning and working is now being delivered online and all our college sites are now closed.
Online delivery of lessons started last week and I am pleased that we have had very positive feedback from staff and students. I am especially impressed with the maturity and commitment displayed by our students during this time and I am confident that together we will maintain our high standard of teaching and learning.
Students that qualify for them will continue to receive their bursary payments, and their Free School Meal allocation will be added in cash to their bursary payments going forward.
Cancellation of Summer exams
We know that the cancellation of this year’s summer exams (including A Levels, GCSEs and other qualifications) is very unsettling and we want to reassure you that affected students will be able to move on as planned to the next stage of their lives, whether that’s starting university, college or sixth form courses, or getting a job or an apprenticeship.
On Friday 20 March, the Department for Education (DfE) announced that it plans – before the end of July – to give each GCSE, A and AS level student a ‘calculated grade’ which reflects their performance as fairly as possible. They will work with the exam boards, and with schools and colleges, to ensure this is consistently applied for all students. And to make sure this is fair for everyone, the Government will provide clear guidance to us on how to do this.
If any student or their parent feels that the calculated grade doesn’t reflects their performance, they will be able to sit an exam once schools and colleges are open again. Students could also choose to sit exams in summer 2021.
Universities have been asked to be flexible and do all they can to support students and ensure they can progress to higher education.
The Government still has a lot of work to do, and a lot more detail is needed on how all the above will work in practice. They will keep us updated, so when we get more information, we will share it with you.
The Government’s full announcement is available to read here.
If you are studying a vocational qualification, things will be different for you too. For example, Pearson (the awarding body for BTECs) have said: “We feel confident we can award grades for students finishing this academic year by working closely with teachers to collate completed student grades, taking into account student progress on assignments and course work to date and by sampling and verifying student work. We are working to understand the implications of the current context for BTECs and other applied general qualifications and will communicate with learners as soon as we can.”
Staff and student safety is our main priority, and we continue to follow advice from the Government, Public Health England and the Department for Education. We very much hope to be able to reopen our sites as soon as it is safe to do so, but we must take our lead from the Government. We will provide further information as soon as we can, and will keep our college websites and social media feeds updated in the meantime.
We are one of the UK’s largest college groups with 37,000 students and a turnover of £113m, and we’re looking for an Executive Principal, to establish a culture of high aspiration, outstanding pedagogy and exceptional learner experience across our group.
To be the successful candidate, you’ll be an inspiring leader both internally and externally, as you will need to enhance our reach, reputation and influence, create an innovative curriculum, lead outstanding performance and build relationships for successful growth.
You will also have a proven track record of impact on student performance and student experience in a relevant education and training environment, while leading large-scale, successful change and innovation.
