Wentworth Woodhouse is committed to providing opportunities for young people to develop their skills and learn, thus improving their quality of life and boosting the local economy. As part of this commitment, we have a work-related learning strand that gives young people the opportunity to apply their classroom learning in a real-world context and gain experience in a workplace.
We work in partnership with local, regional and even national learning providers from schools to universities to provide work experience, work placements, traineeships, internships, live modules, apprenticeships and T Level placements for students. In fact, so far in 2023 alone we have:
- 8 School Work Experience Placements
- 10 Internship Programmes
- 3 Apprentices
- 1 Traineeship Programme
- 9 Work Placements for Students with Additional Needs
- 1 T Level Student
- 4 Location Marshals
Some of these placements lead to work here at Wentworth Woodhouse and some are one step in the students’ learning journey. Either way, we’re keen to be involved in helping young people develop their skills and passions to find the life they want and, thanks to the National Lottery Heritage Fund, we can be.
Examples:
University Student Consultancy Projects
We worked with International Hospitality Business Management students from Sheffield Hallam University on a project where the students were given a brief to create events to attract young people to visit us. The groups came up with excellent, well researched ideas and we look forward to working with them on these.
Work Placements and Experience
We have students with additional educational needs from Rotherham Opportunities College and RNN Group who, while gaining invaluable skills, experience and confidence to move them into independent living have been a hit in the Butler’s Pantry Café, IT, Front of House and Housekeeping!
We also have work experience placements for school children including a Master Cutler’s Challenge fundraising placement with students from Astrea Academy Dearne and have more lined up with students from Ecclesfield School and Wath Academy this year. We also have a group of young people from Dearne Valley College in the gardens who have worked extremely hard at helping put together the new Forest of Bewilderment, pictured here.
University Internships and Scholarships
We are working with The University of Sheffield on funded internships so we are offering live modules to political science and history students to create lessons on Lady Mabel Smith as part of our empowering women focus and landscape architecture students to create digital maps of the gardens.
We even have national links so students from the Events, Tourism and Hospitality Management Faculty at Leeds Beckett University are working with us to research tea cultures of people who live around Rotherham to tie in with the re-opening of the Camellia House. We also have scholars from Oxford University working on digitalising some of our archives and they are really enjoying delving into the past and developing their digital skills.
Apprenticeships and T Levels
We have several apprentices such as Molly Humphries, who began in catering and moved into admin. She’s really enjoying the role and explained why an apprenticeship was right for her:
“I wanted an apprenticeship because I can continue working, earning and learning at the same time. I like college, however, I always felt the learning style didn’t suit me so with this apprenticeship I can apply my learning every day which suits me better.”
We have a T level student from Barnsley College, Roseanna Clegg, who’s in our catering team and we’ve been delighted to be able to offer her work here as a result of her excellent performance on placement.
Location Marshals
As a desirable filming location we have opportunities for local young people to work on set as Location Marshals – the first rung in a career in the film industry. We were very happy to secure 4 positions for students from Sheffield and Rotherham in our latest exciting project.
Heritage Skills
These skills are desperately needed in a regeneration project as large as ours so, in partnership with Historic England, we offered the Hamish Ogsten Foundation Heritage Building Skills Programme. The summer school enabled trainees to work alongside experts to learn skills in carpentry, bricklaying and joinery, painting and decorating, plastering, roofing and stonemasonry.
Carrying on this work, we ensure that all of our contractors have apprentices so they can learn invaluable specialist heritage industry skills from the capital works projects happening at Wentworth Woodhouse.
William Birch & Sons Ltd cover all construction except housing and civil construction and are the contractors handling the Camellia House regeneration project to make it into a modern Tea Room, bringing it back to life as its original purpose of Lady Rockingham’s Tea Room.
We spoke to John Hutton, Site Manager at William Birch & Sons Ltd, who is managing the Camellia House capital works regeneration project and Archie Walsh who is a Site Manager Trainee apprentice. Interestingly, in a time when apprentices are becoming more popular as one of the many ways people can find a way into their chosen profession, John said that despite demand being high they now only have about 16 apprentices working for them. Yet, over the years they’ve had hundreds! Both Birch & Sons and Wentworth Woodhouse enjoy having apprentices to help the next generation and grow their own employees, but there is still a skills shortage in the construction industry despite the money to be made and the job satisfaction to be had.
In fact, John himself started as an apprentice bricklayer in 1988 and loved it. He really enjoys working on projects, especially heritage regeneration such as the Camellia House, and has been through college and done numerous courses over the years including, recently, an NVQ level 7 in Senior Site Management.
And the exciting opportunities provided by the Site Manager Trainee Apprentice course involve working on site, attending general courses PASMA (Prefabricated Access Suppliers’ and Manufacturers’ Association) as well as courses on specialist skills to gain an overview of what comes with heritage regeneration projects, such as protecting camellias from lime plaster and building subsidence.
Archie’s placement at Wentworth Woodhouse is just one in his overall apprenticeship to give him a taste of various projects that the Site Manager role can cover from heritage to modern building projects such as schools and fire stations. Birch are also supporting Archie to start university to do an apprenticeship course on site management. Archie likes the apprenticeship route and has enjoyed his time at Wentworth Woodhouse, saying:
‘I chose to do an apprenticeship because I am more of a kinaesthetic learner than I am an academic, so an apprenticeship seemed the right route to go down and I am so glad I did, seeing everything I’ve learnt about all first hand on-site.
I did work experience in site management for 3 months before as part of my level 3 qualification at college. And it was only a small piece of everything I’m learning at William Birch but was helpful in me making my decision as to what career I wanted to pursue. Also, being able to do the job that I wanted to do straight away after college and still able to get my qualifications needed for the role.’
The partnerships we have with learning providers are essential for us as a business to support our regeneration through cutting edge ideas and approaches – we’ve enjoyed the ones so far and are looking forward to all those in the pipeline!