Clyde Gateway – creating a real life legacy

by Natalie Phillips, Project Manager, Education, Business & Community Growth, Clyde Gateway. Continuing our guest blog series featuring Informed Scotland subscribers writing on the theme Making connections across the learning & skills landscape.

Clyde Gateway is an urban regeneration company designed to drive inner investment across the east of Glasgow and South Lanarkshire. While that remains of great importance, creating a real life legacy for the local communities is also a key priority and underpins all the work undertaken by myself and the team.

A key part of my role here focuses on forming educational partnerships and creating and facilitating educational initiatives for local primary and secondary schools. It’s fair to say this involvement is both extensive and innovative.

Each year more than £100,000 is spent on a wide range of projects within primary and secondary schools. Over the last four years Clyde Gateway has directly invested around £650,000 on a range of themes and projects in line with Curriculum for Excellence. This funding has enhanced core educational programmes, all of which are designed to promote activities inside and outside the classroom and make valuable contributions to the curriculum.

One of the recent programmes which we have been working hard to pull together with local schools and businesses is the now coveted ‘Hotel & Hospitality Academy’, an innovative programme designed to provide some of Glasgow and South Lanarkshire’s school leavers with work experience and tangible job opportunities. This successful partnership with the Marriott Hotel in Glasgow has now entered its second year.

We didn’t just pick the hospitality sector on a whim. Thorough research was carried out so we know that it’s currently a real growth area, offering those taking part in the Academy real job opportunities.

As of 2015, this programme has been accredited by Skills Development Scotland to deliver Certificate of Work Readiness (CWR) qualifications. Schools have now embedded CWR into the core curriculum, working in partnership with our business partner Glasgow Marriott to obtain a 90 per cent CWR pass rate with 50 per cent of pupils taking part in guaranteed work with the hotel.

The programme is the perfect example of the beneficial results which can be seen when schools and businesses align, helping to create worthwhile initiatives for young people.

We are also set to launch a similar programme towards the end of this year aimed at Primary 5 pupils. The four week project will see learners design a hotel room fit for a school pupil, and organise an event working with various mentors and colleagues from the hospitality sector.

Clyde Gateway always looks to work with the local community and employers to provide learning and future employment opportunities for youngsters in the area; rest assured, we will continue to do so for years to come.

We will look to expand and grow our Hotel & Hospitality Academy over the coming years – but it won’t stop there. Constant evolution is key. We started this programme for secondary pupils, before developing an initiative for unemployed adults, and have future links planned with primary schools. We always look at the bigger picture. We have a lot more planned to benefit the local community, all of which will help to create a real legacy for those across the east end of Glasgow and South Lanarkshire.

For further information contact Natalie Phillips [email protected]
Website: http://clydegateway.com  Facebook: ClydeGateway  Twitter: @ClydeGateway

Read previous guest blogs in the series, including those from EDT Scotland, SCQF Partnership, UCAS, UKCES and SQA.