Near miss for Terberg apprentice

Thinking back to December of last year you may remember that Terberg apprentice, Jordan Smith, collected a Special Achievement award for Work Based Learning in recognition of his hard work at Terberg and North Nottinghamshire College in Worksop. At the time Terberg Matec UK reported that Jordan had also been shortlisted for the Nottinghamshire Training Network Apprentice of the Year award with the Oscar™ style award ceremonies to take place in January 2007.

Well, the time is now and the auspicious, black tie evening event took place on the 25th January 2007, held at the East Midlands Conference Centre in the campus of the University of Nottingham.

Jordan was joined at the event by members of the management team from Terberg’s Worksop manufacturing site, members of his family and several representatives from North Nottinghamshire College.

The award ceremonies encompassed entries in all categories from the whole of Nottinghamshire, the Nottinghamshire Training Network (NTN) is made up of 42 organisations. The sum of which comprises seven local colleges, eight national training providers, nineteen local training providers, a local authority, one chamber of commerce and six support organisations. Collectively, these organisations are all responsible for delivering Work Based Learning and apprenticeships for in the region of 8000 learners with an impressive annual throughput of 11,000 learners.

With competition as widespread and numerous as this, its quite an achievement for Jordan to become shortlisted for the award regardless of whether he won the Apprentice of the Year award or not.

Pre-dinner speeches presented by Chris Payne of NTN and Chris Banks CBE, chairman of the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) were met with open ears, the evening’s dinner that followed was met with open mouths and then came the main reason why the event was brimming with hopeful candidates and their supporters, the award ceremony.

The event saw entries over the 9 available categories exceeding 230. 96 Trent FM’s Jo and Twiggy took the helm to announce each category nominees and of course the eventual winners.

The category of Apprentice Award came around and the anticipation of the evening for table 8 was coming to a head with Jordan’s family just about out of fingernails, a short video reel was run showing brief interviews with each of the nominees giving an insight into each nominee’s achievements.

As the winner was announced, hearts dropped at the Terberg table as Jordan Smith took runner up position for the award and although a little disappointed at first, on reflection he is still very proud of the achievement. Jordan was awarded with £75 worth of vouchers and a superb heavy glass engraved trophy presented to him by Geoff Hall, Principal and CEO of New College Nottingham.

Terberg’s production supervisor, John Kendall, said "Jordan has come such a long way, especially with his award last year and then his nomination for this award tonight. It is a real shame that he didn’t win the main prize tonight, but runner up position isn’t exactly losing either considering the competition. What really inspires me is that Jordan took the decision with maturity beyond his years and didn’t get downhearted. We are still very proud of him here at Terberg and look forward to many years of working with him, he’s sure to excel in his role here at Terberg."