Apprentice Awards 2017

Author: Chris Butterfield

Last year’s awards ceremony was part of a busy evening for Freemen, starting with the renaming of one of the Town Hall committee rooms as the Freemen’s Room, then proceeding to the admission of a new Freeman and finally to presentation of the apprentice awards. This year’s occasion on 9th March was devoted to the awards alone.

As ever, John Sanders had done most of the preparatory work, inviting nominations, collating these, circulating the papers to other committee members who participated in the scoring, and then gathering the scores to determine who were the successful candidates. From the 13 candidates, 8 were successful, receiving their certificates at the ceremony attended by the Lord Mayor Councillor Mohammed Altaf-Khan and the Sheriff Councillor Susan Brown.

Competition between the nominees is within their respective occupational categories. So a carpenter would not compete with a chef. Carpentry and catering were indeed two of the categories, but marketing and business administration also featured, as did various categories of engineering: mechanical, electrical and maintenance. However, the Apprentice of the Year is the one scoring the highest number of marks overall, across all occupations. She was Jade McGinty of Lucy’s, an electrical engineer.

It was heartening to see how the apprentice path to qualification is seen increasingly as a worthwhile alternative to full-time study at university. Full coverage of the event followed a few days later in the Oxford Mail, and we hope such publicity will maintain and increase support for the awards.