The Course

Principal Learning (learning you have to do)
This covers all you need to know about hospitality at the level you’re studying. You’ll learn about the hospitality industry and its importance to the UK economy and everyday lives. This includes good customer service (with customers and colleagues) as well as basic legislation and health and safety. You’ll also learn about the different departments that make up a hospitality business, and the skills you need to work in them.

Additional and specialist learning (options you can choose)
You can take specialist courses in hospitality as part of your Diploma. It might be in food preparation for example, or guest services, business and administration or IT. You can choose to do a GCSE or A level in subjects like food technology, economics or languages, which might be useful for a university course. You can also pick subjects to do with a hobby like art or history.

Functional Skills (curriculum subjects)
You’ll still do English, maths and ICT as part of your Diploma course. You’ll need them to get your Diploma qualification, and for whatever you go on to do next.

Personal, Learning and Thinking Skills
These are skills like team-working, creative thinking and self-management. You’ll need them for life, study and work, and they’ll help you to be a success whatever you do in the future.

Work Experience
On your Diploma course you’ll get to do at least 10 days’ work experience. It’s a great way to use the skills you’ve learnt in the classroom, and see what work is really like. It could be time spent with an events company, getting a taste of all the different jobs people do; working in the kitchen of a local cafe, hotel or restaurant - even a contract catering company.

Student Project
You can do your project about anything you like because you choose the topic, and how you’re going to present your work. You’ll need to show all the things you’ve learnt on your Diploma course, but what you do it on is up to you. It could be a written piece of work, like a report; an investigation or something practical. As an example, you could use your work placement to do a customer survey for a local restaurant. Your report could include a chart of your findings, and you could present it using a computer programme like PowerPoint.