Categories:
General News
Press Features
Blog Items
ftc encourages the expertise of industry employers to get involved and help design a new, world class butchery apprenticeship
Six years on from the launch of the award-winning Level 2 Butcher Apprenticeship Standard, the meat industry is to have an all new, ‘future-proofed’ butchery apprenticeship.
Though the Level 2 Butcher Standard is highly respected the meat industry has seen such innovation in recent years that the employer group believe a brand new apprenticeship is needed to reflect these. The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, the government body responsible for apprenticeship standards, has approved the project and will assist and ensure the group produce standards with sufficient detail for industry consultation.
The process is expected to take around six months and begins in earnest later this month. As before, skills charity, ftc, will be providing secretariat services to the group, having helped design the original L2 Butcher Standard, which was hailed as ‘exemplar’ by government when launched in 2016.
The group is chaired by Cranswick Operations Director, Darren Andrew, supported by Vice Chair, David Lishman, of Lishman’s of Ilkley. All sectors within butchery are represented within the group, which includes: ABP, Karro, Morrisons, retail butcher John Mettrick’s Butchers, catering butchers Aubrey Allen, and wholesale butchers, Bookers.
Retail butchers have coped with unprecedented increases in demand, many by introducing online ordering for the first time. Now the norm for many butchers this too requires new ways of working and learning new skills.
Although yet to be finalised, the sector specific options being considered are:
ftc’s new Chief Executive, Christine Walsh, who herself has a wealth of experience in driving training and education in the meat industry, said,
‘ The whole point of apprenticeships today is that they are ‘designed by employers for employers’ and so deliver the skills, knowledge and behaviours employers need. The butchery apprenticeship has achieved that aim to date, but the world has moved on. Our task now is to design the next generation butchery apprenticeship that meets the diverse needs of ALL butchery employers today, and tomorrow. We can only do that with input from the people that will be using it – meat industry employers.’
There are a number of ways to be part of the project:
