This weekend it emerged in the Guardian newspaper that the Government was planning to introduce "curry colleges" - training centres devoted to skilling British workers in the art of Asian cuisine - in a bid to overcome skills shortages in the sector caused by the immigration cap.
Annoyingly, the Government doesn't want to reveal any more detail on how these colleges will be funded or what form they might take.
The restaurateurs I have spoken to so far in the sector are not hugely impressed. They have reservations over whether this is a measure that will really help the sector, question whether enough skilled people will have time to teach novices their skills, and wonder if it is all PR.
But they do like the idea in principle, so long as it takes the form of an apprenticeship with hands-on experience in restaurants.
I'd be interested to get more thoughts on the matter? Is this a decent enough substitute for a relaxation of the migration cap? What form should any training take?
Interesting question Neil - I'm always in support of any government initiatives to support training in this area, but in terms of the food I think the authenticity of the food will always suffer no matter how many training colleges or initiatives you put in place.
Many of our clients who have distinct regional cuisine at the heart of their menu have quietly grumbled to me in the past year about their troubles with finding qualified staff and that their kitchens are suffering form their recent inability to recruit from abroad. For them the best is always straight form the country in question.
I doubt whether this idea has got any of them excited in any way.
Now whether is a good enough political reason for a government to soften their immigration stance is an entirely subjective matter and one I'm not really going to delve much further into ;)
when we have 2.5million unemployed, anything to help reduce that and if training works to get them skilled to fill a need then that makes sense.
we could argue that teaching classic french cuisine in our colleges years ago was no use as the students were not from france!! Instead it helped us stretch our culinary skills!
Calvin Hanks
www.cjgroup.co.uk
Great responses both - I agree it is unlikely the Government is going to soften its immigration stance.
I also agree that properly handled, this initiative could be constructive. The question is, how does the Government ensure that the quality of training is of a sufficient quality to produce chefs who can hold their own among chefs who have been brought up with these culinary traditions?
Then again, I also take the point that there are plenty of chefs steeped in classical French cooking who aren't French!