School aims to attack chef shortage with new academy

Melbourne’s respected William Angliss Institute of TAFE has officially opened new training facilities it hopes will work to address the problem of the chef shortage in Australia.

It’s launched its new Angliss Culinary Academy—a facility that will have the capacity to train up 600 chefs, cooks and patissiers a year.

William Angliss Institute’s board president, Margaret Gosch said a lack of kitchens to train greater numbers had been “compounding the problem of what has been a decade long shortage of chefs”.

“The Culinary Academy will go a long way to meeting the needs of an industry struggling to keep up with its reputation as a leading culinary capital due to an estimated shortfall of some 2,000 chefs, 2,500 kitchen hands and 1,500 supervisors,” Gosch said.

Gosch said the Academy was set to become one of the most “inspiring culinary training schools in Australia, working with industry to reshape the Institute’s cookery and patisserie programs to ensure a bright future for culinary arts in Australia.”

The academy will also offer Certificate II-IV level courses in Cookery including Asian Cookery, Patisserie, Commercial Cookery and Kitchen Operations; school-based new Apprenticeships in Cookery and Patisserie; Vocational Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL) programs in cookery, as an alternative to VCE, plus a range of short course programs for the general public and culinary professionals.

William Angliss Institute already has 550 domestic students, including 400 apprentices, and 330 international students studying a diverse range of culinary programs including Professional Cookery, Patisserie, Asian and Commercial Cookery.

The academy’s facilities include two state-of-the-art training unit kitchens, a demonstration kitchen and a specially equipped area for the provision of coffee/bar training.

3 July 2006