At Heart of England Training, we love to offer extra opportunities for our staff. We have four Hairdressing and Beauty Therapy Academies within the midlands. At our Rugby Academy we recently had two of our staff members, Georgina and Clare pass their own apprenticeships both with DISTINCTION!
Georgina’s Story
Georgina York is one of our valued beauty educators at Rugby Academy. She works with all our learners to ensure that they can receive the best learning possible. Georgina joined us back in 2016. She has decided to expand her career further by doing an apprenticeship in hairdressing with us. Although from a beauty background Georgina wanted to expand her skills within the hairdressing sector as well.
Apprenticeships are an ideal way to get started in any chosen career as they offer the candidate the chance to earn as they learn whilst working towards a qualification or standard, and at the same time, enable them to gain valuable industry experience in any given sector.
How can an apprenticeship help you?
Georgina went on to add how her apprenticeship with Heart of England Training really helped build up her confidence. “Nicole and Sheila worked hard to give me as much training as possible and I felt they really believed in me when I lacked a lot of confidence.”
Being able to build up on her confidence has allowed Georgina to not only get another qualification under her belt.
Georgina discussed her assessment day and that the “endless support from Nicole helped me prepare for the day and plan exactly what I needed to do”
Georgina finished with “I would recommend doing an apprenticeship because it really helps you prepare more for the industry. You are working with the clients at work and this helps you when it comes to qualifying as you gain not only hairdressing skills but client skills to. My advice to anyone completing an apprenticeship is to put your absolute all into it, ask questions, do all the tasks. The more you put in to it, the more you will get out of it.”
Clare’s Story
Clare Bowes works at Rugby Hairdressing and Beauty Therapy academy as a SEN Support Worker and has recently finished her Level 3 Learning Mentor course with us. Clare told us about her qualification, how she found it and the reasons why she decided to do this qualification. “I chose to do an apprenticeship because I really wanted to push myself and learn something new, as well as gain a new qualification.”
Since starting her job role as an SEN worker with Heart of England Training, Clare has been seeking out new pathways to take to expand her working career further and broaden her understanding on how to help learners progress to the highest standard possible.
The role of an SEN worker consists of working closely with children and young people who have additional needs and/ or disabilities. For Clare, she helps learners with additional needs by providing them with extra support and facilities to help them progress with their course comfortably and in a way that is tailored to them.
Clare continued to elaborate on how much her Level 3 Qualification has given her a better understanding and approach when it comes to her day-to-day work.
“When it comes to my job role, I have found that I am able to support the learners more readily when looking at learning or employment options.”
Clare also explained that as a result of completing an apprenticeship herself, she is now able to have a much better understanding of what the learners may or may not be going through when completing their course, and she can also directly relate to the feelings that they may be having as she has now experienced them too.
Heart of England training is rated ‘good’ by Ofsted, and we are currently ranking No.1 on the gov website for apprenticeships. We love hearing the feedback that we receive from all of our learners, so we asked Clare how she feels about her apprenticeship and what the process was like for her.
“I found my apprenticeship to be very straight-forward. Luckily, we planned all of my sessions in advance, and I kept up to date with my OTJ (off the job) hours.”
“I would always recommend that learners regularly log their off the job hours in order to keep on target. My EPA was set quickly, and I was kept informed of the process at all times. My EPA assessor contacted me and went through all that I needed to know and expect on the day of my EPA”
Clare finished off with some more wonderful feedback on her qualification.
“Apprenticeships are a great way to gain knowledge and understanding whilst working. It pushes you to work towards a goal and gives you the motivation to succeed.”
