2021 National Butchers Week – How Crosby Celebrated
Last week – commencing 08.03.2021 – all the butchery department at CMT celebrated National Butcher’s Week (NBW) and International Women’s Day.
On Monday we were able to send a nod to all our young, inspiring females who are working tirelessly throughout the pandemic to make sure the public are able to carry on eating! The young ladies taking their time to perfect their craft are becoming role models to others while raising the profile of women in meat and building networks. Our trainer Tara has recently joined the Meat Business Women community and on Monday watched an Instagram Live discussion with Sophie Milliken about her new book The Ambition Accelerator.
We were able to celebrate the passing of some fantastic learners on their EPAs, there were four in one week and one of them was our first female on the ILR, Violetta from Wholefoods! Well done to all the apprentices who have been able to continue their learning throughout the pandemic and were able to pass with such fantastically bright, flying colours. Well done to all involved in keeping the workshops going remotely on various internet platforms!
What better way to revel in NBW than to have a graduation ceremony for all our brilliant Sainsburys learners on passing their EPAs too. We had some really fabulous talent coming through with this cohort and we could not be prouder of all their efforts over the past few months, especially with two individuals passing with excellence! Our relationship with Sainsburys will always be strong after the success of all the butchery apprentices. The skills they learnt with us will be transferable to all the different lines of work in their future endeavours.
Recently at CMT, we were visited by Ofsted and got a glowing report! One learner who stood out in the process was Steven Jones. Trainer Chris Riley conducted a remote observation of Steven’s pork butchery skills via a Teams call. This was viewed by Ofsted to show how the butchery team have adapted to the new way of working in this new pandemic age. Steven then claimed the coveted Apprentice of the Month for his hard work and his ability to show what he has learnt, even with the difficulties faced with remote sessions and the lack of face-to-face visits.
All the trainers in the butchery department have been working hard to be innovative and learn at pace with the ever-changing ways of delivery. This week, Chris delivered his first training session for us all on Webex on how to invigilate a remote examination correctly and appropriately. Once we understood the process we were able to trial the new system, thanks to the support of FDQ, using breakout rooms. This will was a great opportunity to work as a team and learn how this fabulous tool can be utilised for the delivery of group workshops on both level 2 and level 3 apprenticeships.
Finally, we need to mention the incredible response we have got to our residential that we will be hosting in August of 2021. Due to the pandemic, we were unable to host this at all last year and some of our apprentices missed out! We set a target for 10 apprentices to sign up for the trip in August, but we have completely blown the target out of the water and have signed on a whopping 18 apprentices. This will be a fantastic few days away for all those involved, building on their knowledge, skills and behaviours.
