Previous hospitality institutions I visited, the Wavecrest College, the Lagoon hospital and Iroto school appeared to be well-looked after, spacious and quite environments. These were, however privately owned charity-led establishments with small number of rigorously selected students. Yesterday I visited a state school of hospitality, part of the wider techical college established in 1947.
From a walk around, an attended class, interview with the school director Mrs Anyafulu Anino and an informal canteen-based chat with students afterwards, I learnt some facts and thoughts about public hospitality education in Lagos state:
– my interviews at Lagos hotels revealed the lack or qualified staff to employ as one of the industry’s prominent issues. The Yaba tech representative doubted this claiming that hotels actually prefer picking untrained staff ‘from the street’, training them and paying them less given no prior education.
– the college is a single double storey building taking close to 500 students, spread between 4 years of study (two lower and two higher diploma). The Government only provides financial support to colleges as densely populated as the one at Yaba tech.
– training facilities here were heavily used and in a much more rundown state than in other hospitality schools I visited. They hardly resembled rooms or equipment one sees at the hotels.
– a degree of control between the spaces is required so that students don’t hide from classes at the practice kitchens or use the practice bathrooms (which are in a bad state already)
Above: hospitality department building
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