Walford goes International

Prospective students at Walford and North Shropshire College are being invited to apply for three travel scholarships as part of a new scheme to broaden the horizons of College students.

Windmill in Amsterdam

The three scholarships are each worth up to £1,000 and will be awarded by the R D Park Trust, the charitable trust originally founded in memory of Walford’s first Principal, Don Park. The successful applicants will be able to use the scholarship to fund an overseas visit of relevance to their course of study in either horse management; floristry or countryside.

Andrew Tyley, College Principal, expects a lot of interest from potential students: “Our agriculture students, who can already apply for scholarships from the Trust, often cite the annual New Zealand exchange as one of the highlights of their two years at Walford. It is great to be able to offer these new scholarships to students in other land-based disciplines and I am sure there will be a lot of interest. We have not specified any particular destinations as we want to encourage students to come up with their own ideas, but there are some obvious places which are likely to feature such as Holland (floristry), Spain, Germany or Austria (horse management) and Scandinavia (countryside)”.

Lucy Beaumont, Assistant Director of Learner Services is enthusiastic about the benefits of international travel to students: “Thanks to European funding, we have been able to take a significant number of our apprentices for work experience in a range of European countries such as Turkey, Italy and Sweden. The apprentices return with a much richer understanding of the work ethic and working environment of the host country and often with a much more positive perspective on conditions here in the UK. In what is increasingly a global job market, international opportunities are an important part of our efforts to prepare our young students for the competitive world in which we live. This generous donation by the R D Park Trust will provide another important range of opportunities to those with a particular interest in floristry, equine or countryside courses”.

Any potential student interested in applying for one of the new travel bursaries should contact enquiries@wnsc.ac.uk for further details or download an application form from the College website at www.wnsc.ac.uk. Students will be offered advice and support from their course tutor to ensure the visit is carefully planned with appropriate measures in place to meet health and safety requirements.