Former female student is now serving as a qualified Chef in the RAF  

Olivia Brown decided to enrol at North Lindsey College after leaving The Vale Academy to study on the Level 3 Extended Diploma in Professional Cookery. With her passion for cooking, Olivia had career pathway she was aiming for and always knew that joining the RAF was her future goal.  

Olivia soon met her objective and is now a fully qualified chef in the forces and has already embarked on her first RAF posting and has also been inspired to go into teaching in the future.  

With her new career taking her to unknown territories, Olivia’s training at College has prepared her for the future which could involve her preparing food at five-star forces banquets one day and feeding serving troops in the field the next.    

During her time at the popular Scunthorpe College, Olivia was chosen to travel to Troyes in France as part of a work experience placement provided by the College through the Erasmus programme, which also saw DN Colleges Group recently recognised as an AoC Beacon Award winner. Olivia grabbed the opportunity to travel and build her industry skills, alongside experience of travelling and cooking in a foreign country in a working environment.  

Olivia said, “I chose this career path as it is a guaranteed contract which allows you to travel and meet many different people. It also helps with trying new activities which will benefit your health as well as it being fun.   

“My future plans are to try and become higher in rank and continuously work to every stage possible. I hope to do teaching as a chef through their training for future recruits. The College’s course helped me get the right skills and knowledge to help with my own work now and transfer these across. It also gave me a range of experiences to give me an idea of what I would like to do once I finished.”  

Simon French and Helen Bee (Catering Tutors at North Lindsey College) said, “Olivia was an outstanding student at North Lindsey College, she was exceptionally dedicated and took huge pride in her work.  

“Olivia was well known and recognised by her tutors for her work that she did outside of College as well as what she did when in College. Olivia achieved her final catering qualification of a City and Guilds Level 3 Diploma in Advanced Professional Cookery with a Distinction grade, an amazing result but only what she deserved. She had a phenomenal work ethic and ability to retain information which was due to the effort that she put into her classroom and homework. Olivia had a consistently high achievement record for all practical assessments, due to well-practiced practical skills, she would often ask for feedback and development points, and this was always taken as a positive which allowed her to achieve her potential.  

“While working on completing her studies for her Level 3 in Professional Cookery, Olivia was already investigating her career progression and applying to join the RAF. She took this seriously too and began training to improve her fitness to enable her to pass all the required physical and mental ability tests to the best of her ability.  

“The Catering team here are very proud of what she has achieved at North Lindsey College, which gave her the skills and confidence to fulfil her career goal and continue to make a successful career in the RAF.”