The Training & Quality Standard is an assessment framework designed to recognise and celebrate the best organisations delivering training and development solutions to employers. The framework has a focus on two very different but linked competencies. Firstly, it focuses on the response to the needs of employers as individual companies and secondly, in the ability to develop and deploy products to address these needs.

Having submitted an application, the college was visited by assessors in May 2008 in order for claims to be verified and scores to be awarded. Outcomes were passed to a certification panel who concluded that the college had proved itself to be a worthy recipient of the Training Quality Standard.

The Training Quality Standard succeeds the college’s current status as a Centre of Vocational Excellence (CoVE) for Hospitality and Catering. Stratford-upon-Avon College achieved CoVE status in 2003. It has embraced this achievement not only by continuing to provide high calibre training programmes to students at the college but also by supporting a selection of Hospitality and Catering courses at Henley College, and North Warwickshire & Hinckley College. Additionally, in a unique arrangement, Stratford-upon-Avon College delivers the Hospitality and Catering provision at Warwickshire College’s Rugby campus. This enables students from across the county to benefit from the college’s unrivalled expertise in this area. Having now received the Training Quality Standard award, the college has demonstrated that it is consistently providing top quality training and consequently is the institution of choice for hospitality, leisure, travel and tourism.