Lambeth Council and Harrison Catering; Turning Catering Assistants into Highly Skilled Cooks

Thursday 16 October 2008

The 6 happy graduates each received a certificate and cook book from the famous French Laundry Restaurant in a special awards ceremony held in Central London.

First year's intake graduate with flying colours.

Always keen to create a learning environment within schools kitchens, this week Lambeth school kitchens saw 6 ambitious catering assistants develop new craft skills and become fully fledged school cooks, under a new scheme run by Harrison Catering.

Within the Lambeth Council school meal service, Harrison have created a craft skills training scheme, the Harrison Academy (Lambeth), which provides a combination of formal training, work based experience, mentoring and exposure to a variety of different food service environments.

Cllr Paul McGlone, Lambeth’s cabinet member for children and young people, said: “Harrison Catering and Lambeth have a great track record of providing nutritious school meals and it's wonderful that Harrison’s new trained cooks will now be joining school kitchens across the borough to help keep pupils eating healthily.”

At the end of this first year, the Harrison Academy (Lambeth) has trained six catering assistants and given them the skills to become qualified cooks. The lucky six are now all heading off for new jobs as school cooks with the council’s school meals contract. Each have provided a few words in reflection of their experiences....

Hayley Campbell: "It’s been a great experience in doing what I enjoy, Cooking."

Elizabeth Wright: "The Harrison Academy has been hard work and fun. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to excel themselves to apply because it is a great opportunity for all staff."

Gifty Larbi: "It was great for me to have the opportunity to learn more about cooking and to experience other sectors of the catering industry as well as visiting some very interesting food markets."

Emelyn McGill: "It was lovely training and a hard year. The most exciting part was the work experience days and market visits. It was really interesting and I learnt a lot, in fact I never stopped learning."

Maria Carvalho: "It was good; I learnt a lot of things and enjoyed working in different places and visiting the food markets."

Nickema Brown: "Everything was good and I learnt a lot. I really enjoyed the year and it was a great experience."

Nicola Turk, Manager Client Services responsible for the Lambeth contract said "This is a fantastic opportunity for us to grow our own talent. Using the skills and resources already available in the company we have trained these ambitious Catering Assistants and created a whole new generation of school cooks. We’re going to repeat this process again this year, with the next group having already been chosen and getting ready to start their training."

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