Robert E. Mattock

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Horticultural Apprenticeships

• Robert E. Mattock
• Managing Director Robert Mattock Roses
• Department of Architecture Civil Engineering
• Department of Plant Sciences
• University of Bath

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Horticultural Apprenticeships

• The research for this project is being under
  taken in the University of Bath under the
  supervision of Dr Marion Harney, Department of
  Architecture and Civil Engineering and Dr John
  Beeching, Department of Biology Biochemistry,
  Plant Sciences

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Horticultural Apprenticeships

• Definition of Apprentice
• A person who works for another to learn a trade

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Horticultural Apprenticeships

• Definition of a tradesman
• A tradesman is a skilled manual worker in a
  particular trade or craft.

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The Horticultural Apprentice

• The Craftsman
• Homo faber, Animal laborans
• Hannah Arendt The Human Condition 1958
• At different moments in Western history
  practical activity has been divorced from
  supposedly higher pursuits
• Richard Sennett The Craftsman Yale 2008

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Horticultural Apprenticeships
Hybridisation (Homo faber, the inventor)
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Horticultural Apprenticeships
Budding (Homo laborans, The Craftsman)
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Horticultural Apprenticeships

• Historically in the UK and throughout Europe
• the dissemination of practical horticulture
  skills descended through
• The Head Gardener
• Journeyman
• Apprentice
• The zenith of the head gardener occurred in the
  U.K. in the late 20th. century

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Horticultural Apprenticeships
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Horticultural Apprenticeships

• Poland
• The gymnasium, the secondary stage of general
  education, is compulsory in Poland for pupils
  aged 13 to 16. Education at this level is
  designed to help pupils develop adequate
  knowledge and skills

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Horticultural Apprenticeships

• Poland
• Post-Gymnasium Secondary Education At age 16,
  the gymnasium graduate chooses to prepare for
  higher education or to begin training for a
  vocation. Those seeking the former attend a three
  year profiled lyceum which confers entitlement to
  enter a university.
• Other students choose a two year vocational
  school, which ends with a vocational examination.

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Horticultural Apprenticeships

• Vocational schools are two-year schools based on
  the gymnasium model and preparing graduates for
  employment. The certificate confirms their
  vocational knowledge and skills. In vocational
  schools, about 35 percent of the lessons stress
  general knowledge and social skills and aim to
  develop proper adult attitudes. The remaining
  lessons impart intensive vocational knowledge and
  skills to raise the graduate to the journeyman
  (or entry-level) employee.

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Horticultural Apprenticeships

• Modern Day Apprentices in Germany
•  The German apprenticeship education is a
  worldwide unique education system that allows
  students working in a company and at a profession
  orientated school at the same time. It is an
  advanced combination of theory, practice and
  getting a low salary. This smart education system
  has a long tradition in Germany, dates back
  300-400 years to the Guilds and is seem as the
  foundation for Germanys skilled production,

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Horticultural Apprenticeships

• Germany
• The 'dual system'.
• By law the apprentices must be given structured
  training by their employer, alongside the general
  and vocational education they receive. It all
  ensures Germany has enough labour to do the
  jobs.
• Tradition of being loyal to a company
• A system supported by politicians and society -
  and needed by the companies

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Horticultural Apprenticeships

• Germany
• The trained apprentices are fed into long-term
  successful businesses, committed to planning
  future products and investing in the workforce
  which will be equipped to produce them.

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Horticultural Apprenticeships

• United Kingdom
• The term apprentice in the UK has been
  bastardised to include higher levels of education
  remote from training craftsmen in hands-on skills
  to the extent that the historic system of
  apprentice, journeyman to head gardener has for
  the most part been lost.

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Horticultural Apprenticeships

• Capel Manor College
• Programmes can take between 12 18 months to
  complete.
• Apprentices attend college on either a day or
  block release basis for 12 months.
• The remainder is spent in the workplace
  completing a portfolio of work.

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Horticultural Apprenticeships

• How the European systems differ
• Quality of craftsmen
• How the end product differs
• Quality of product

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• United Kingdom
• The problem
• To sustain and increase productivity financial
  competition has been introduced rather than the
  encouragement of skilled production and quality.

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• United Kingdom
• The problem
• In the west we have developed a culture whereby
  management has been encouraged to strip
  businesses of their working capital and cash flow
  to provide excessive salaries, bonuses and profit
  share for profligate personal gratification.
• There is not enough left in the pot to train the
  craftsmen necessary for quality production.

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• United Kingdom
• The problem
• Our culture has given craftsman financial
  aspirations imitative of the personal profligacy
  of their management way and beyond the profit
  from the production of the operation for whom
  they are working.

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• United Kingdom
• The result
• A massively reduced skilled workforce
  insufficient for the level of production and
  profit necessary to support the long term
  viability of the operation.
• Unsupportable debt and leverage has been used to
  camouflage the lack of skilled production by
  importing quality product at a price affordable
  by the consumer.

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• The solution.
• Stop management from paying themselves and their
  craftsman un-realistic salaries and wages and
  instead invest in the vocational educational
  training of the productive craftsman.

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ROBERT MATTOCK ROSES