Duke of Edinburgh Weekend

The BTEC National certificate Public Services (Uniformed) course recently underwent a practice expedition run at Suntrap education centre in High Beech, Epping Forest.

The students, who are working towards their bronze award practised how to put up tents, cook using minimal resources, orienteer and practise map reading skills whilst also doing a brisk 4 hour walk through the forest in the rain.

The next challenge is to plan, prepare and undertake a 3 day, 2 night venture in the Gower, Wales at the end of June.

There is also to be at least 6 hours of planned activity each day.

Well done all, and good luck!

Gastronomic Tour

A number of the staff managed to slip away from the college with a collection of NVQ Level 2 students.

They ended up on a foodie version of a pub crawl, in London's West End.

First stop was Le Gavroche restaurant at 44 Upper Brook Street.

Here they met Michael Roux the Head Chef / Owner and were given a talk regarding the Industry and a tour of the kitchens.

Next stop was the Royal Lancaster Hotel, London W2.

They kindly gave the students a tour of the hotel showing Banqueting Halls and kitchens.

It is the third largest banqueting hotel in London.

Their final stop was Galvins at 66 Baker Street, London.

Here they met the owner / Head Chef Jeff Galvin who proved it was the most up and coming restaurant in London.


It was an enjoyable day with students able to see various form of catering outlets from large to small.

In the Army now...

Here you can see the NVQ 1 Catering Students showing off the Army officers they 'captured' - well, on film at least!

It was during a day visit to Aldershot, when they enjoyed a tour around the kitchens.

The day included the opportunity to produce lunch under canvas - in the rain - a very welcome warm up for a cold day.

We Focus on the BBC

Recently six students from Focus 12 (one of the college’s under 16 provisions) went on a visit to BBC Broadcasting House.

The students, who have been making their own radio shows in the college (Focus FM), were invited by a producer to see behind-the-scenes at a live broadcast.

After a tour around the building the student’s were allowed to practice their skills on a mixing desk before watching a live broadcast of Radio 4’s “You and Yours” where Lord Coe was fielding questions about the 2012 Olympics.

Finally two of the students were interviewed for a future broadcast before being treated to a dinner in the infamous BBC Canteen. The students thoroughly enjoyed the trip and really benefited from seeing a professional radio show in action. Michael Thompson said “The highlight for me was getting to use their studio” while Ibrahim Ilham said “It was amazing to what goes on at a real radio station”.

The student’s continue to work on improving their radio shows and have been invited to the 1extra studios next year.

We seen the Screen

Recently 14 first year student representatives from the school of Business and Computing visited SCREEN UK at Milton Keynes.

SCREEN UK is one of leading providers of digital printing technologies to the printing industry and has close working relationship with HP, Tesco and others.

We all met in the college and used the college minibus to get to Milton Keynes. The journey took around 90 minutes travelling across four counties, (Essex, Herts., Beds. and Bucks.). To stop boredom setting in, we played a ‘Blockbuster’ game during the journey which worked out quiet well (the sweets went down nicely too) – it would have been even better had the laptop battery been charged and able to keep up with our pace.

At SCREEN UK, we were shown a brief history of the printing company and the role of computers and IT in modern printing before going on to see a demonstration of how text and images are transferred onto paper and printed in a form of a poster or magazine. We then split into two groups and were shown the operation of two digital printing machines, each worth around £250,000, in turn.

The students represented the college like true professionals, asking the right questions and showing interest during the events. Well done all.

We finished our tour around 12.30, and after thanking the organisers, headed back to the college.

No fog on the Tyne

Amongst those fortunate enough to be invited aboard HMS Tyne during her four day visit to London, were some Waltham Forest College students who are studying Tourism and the Public Services.

HMS Tyne is a River Class offshore patrol vessel currently carrying out fishery protection duties and she and her crew enjoyed a well earned rest in the Capital after four busy weeks’ duty up to 300 miles off Lands End.

Lieutenant Chris Benarr (pictured below) the ship’s Operations officer welcomed the students and led a tour to every part of the ship, which is home to some 30 officers and crew, explaining in detail their important role in the Royal Navy and life aboard and ashore.

The students were able to take their places on the bridge, try out the 20mm cannon (fortunately not loaded), were given a demonstration on the finer points of fire fighting and Lt. Benarr outlined the purpose of the function of the boarding of fishing vessels to carry out routine inspections and enforcing UK and EU fisheries legislation.
During these operations two man teams from the ship conduct boardings of fishing vessels inspecting net sizes, weight of catches, fish sizes, composure of catches and the vessel's logbook and licence.

Palma Paella

Where's the best place to go to try Paella?

We think it might be Palma Majorca.

Paella is just one thing we tried when BTEC National Diploma Travel and Tourism Year One went on a fact finding mission.

The main objective was to reseach and understand the marketing activities and and customer service provisions of a number of different travel and tourism organisations.

However, we admit that we did get time to visit the aquarium and to check out the beach at Can Pastilla.

Waltham Tritons & Forest Swim School

Lessons and coached sessions:

Non-swimmers to competitive standard.

• 3 year olds to adult with specific sessions available for 11+ years.

Fees from £52 for a 13 week term.

Waltham Forest College pool and Ilford County High School. Monday, Wednesday and Sunday evenings.

Contact Karen 020 8521 7192 or Jackie 07930 752 223 or info@forestswimschool.co.uk

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Belfast under the microscope

The BTEC National Certificate Public Services (uniformed) year 1 students took an investigative journey to Belfast recently.

Whilst there we went on an open top bus tour of the city.

We travelled along the Shankill Road in West Belfast. Throughout the city there are murals depicting local para-military groups such as the UVF, UDA and UFF. Our guide explained some of the intricacies of this delicate situation.

We passed the Belfast Peace Line or Peace Wall, and drove through the Peace Gates in Townsend Street, a physical barrier for vehicles separating the Shankill Road and Falls Road. Staying in West Belfast, we drove along the predominantly Irish Republican or Catholic Falls Road. Here we saw murals showing allegiance with other groups from around the world. We also passed the Sinn Fein Headquarters and the famous Bobby Sands mural at Sevastapol Street.

On the second day we were picked up by police minibuses and driven to the PSNI training centre (Police Service of Northern Ireland) Lisnasharragh complex where we were met by Chief Inspector Kevin Smith (Head of combined operational training). Scones, tea and coffee were laid on and we started our day at police training college.

Chief Inspector Arthur Davidson facilitated an informative session on operational emergency planning which included topics such as the roles of the police, ambulance, fire services and local authorities in major incident emergency planning.

Arthur explained the bronze operational, silver tactical and gold strategic chain of command. Arthur also focused on the importance of teamwork in emergency planning and interagency cooperation.

He gave practical examples of joint emergency planning, training and exercising within the Northern Ireland public services. Arthur also focused on the challenges of emergency planning and focused on the Whiterock 2005 public disorder and the Omagh bombing as real life examples.

We had a delicious lunch buffet courtesy of the PSNI and in the afternoon Constable Michael Hutchinson (Firearms and tactical trainer) facilitated a theoretical and practical session in which he prepared a tabletop scenario of a major incident where a lorry had Just driven into a Fridge Plant room and caused structural damage as well as breaking some pipe work to a Liquid Ammonia Storage System releasing Ammonia gas into the surrounding area.

The students were split into groups representing different uniformed and non-uniformed public services e.g. fire, police, local authorities and NHS. The students role played a major incident table top scenario where they had to cooperate, coordinate and communicate with each other as how to best contain and deal with the emergency. The exercise was well planned and delievered by Michael and Kevin and the students thoroughly enjoyed participating in it as well as covering assessment criteria for their planning for and management of major incidents unit.

We also were introduced to Tom Johnson Sergeant Press officer at the Lisnasharragh police headquarters and he explained how in an emergency incident his department works with the world's press to cover relevant stories.

We were taken back to George Best International Airport in the police minibuses after a very informative, educational and enlightening day.

The staff and students on the Public Services (uniformed) course thank all the staff at PSNI for their hospitality on a very educational and enjoyable day.