Getting your school adopted by a hotel for Transition Year could help youtowards a career in hospitality, writes Louise Holden

For students with a keen interest in a career in hospitality, the Opportunities in Tourism programme provides plenty of exposure to the work of the hotel manager, restaurant manager or chef.

Each participating school is adopted by a local hotel, and all the theoretical knowledge gained in the classroom is backed up by site visits to the adoptive hotel.

As students learn a range of skills in the classroom, they then have the opportunity to see those skills in action. Modules include bacterial contamination and hygiene, food preparation and presentation, information technology, modern languages and business. All of these modules are linked to other core Transition Year subjects.

The Opportunities in Tourism programme also offers core subjects that explore careers in hospitality to help students decide what area, if any, they are suited to. Students are encouraged to pursue their own research into tourism and hospitality in Ireland, and to establish whatever educational paths they need to follow in order to realise their own career goals.

Students spend some of their class time looking at the image of jobs in the hospitality sector. Hotel jobs are not regarded as favourably as other career areas by students with a desire for excitement, earning power and career progression. This programme aims to debunk some of the myths about the sector.

Although the programme is career- focused, it offers students a range of skills that are applicable in many fields. The biology module, for example, examines food additives, explores the causes and effects of food poisoning, and looks at the growing demand for organic foods in Ireland.

The home economics module gives students some basic tips on food preparation, the planning of menus and the management of a busy kitchen. These are life skills as well as career skills - even a brain surgeon must occasionally boil an egg.

The programme has recently been reviewed and shortened, making it more accessible to many schools. The shorter- format programme is currently being piloted in Schull Community School in Cork and Mount Temple Secondary School in Dublin. If it is a success, it will be rolled out to other schools in September.

At six to nine weeks, the newly configured programme is likely to mark the start of many more beautiful school/hotel relationships.