I was invited to the recent All-Party Parliamentary Group meeting for gardening. Lincolnshire is a central place for food produce and I’ve a general interest in gardening myself, but I also wanted to join the meeting was because Alan Titchmarsh was in attendance as a guest speaker.
I know Alan started his career as an apprentice gardener before becoming a doctor in horticulture, and so I wanted to talk to him about what we could do regarding apprenticeships in the area. In my role as FE Ambassador for the government and as chair of the Apprenticeship Diversity Champions Network, I wanted to get a sense of Alan’s opinions were through skills building through apprenticeships. I was pleased to see that Alan was hugely supportive of them.
It was invaluable to have these discussions with him about how apprenticeships worked for him and his career and how it’s helped him become a high profile expert with a doctorate, all from starting out as an apprentice. It’s useful to see how, with all sorts of different industries, starting out as an apprentice can absolutely be the key to success.
