Marco’s programmes.
A chef’s whole career.

Twelve to eighteen months. The foundation tier. Apprentices learn to cook to specification, manage a section, understand allergens and texture-modified diets, and run service at scale. Most are new to the kitchen — school leavers, career changers, kitchen porters who have decided to become chefs.

The premise is simple: that a chef cooking for a hundred residents in a care home should be trained with the same expectations of craft as a chef cooking for thirty covers in a restaurant.

By the end of the Foundation tier, the chef will be running a section of the kitchen with confidence, cooking dishes to specification at the volumes a care kitchen demands, and handling allergens, special diets, and texture-modified meals with the care and accuracy the work requires. They will know how to set up, run, and break down a service. They will understand stock control, food safety, and the daily disciplines of a professional kitchen. They will be ready to take responsibility for a section of their own, and to begin training the next chef coming up behind them.

Fifteen to eighteen months. The development tier. The chef de partie of the care kitchen — the point at which technical skill begins to become pastoral skill, and a cook begins to lead.

The Academy’s view is that the most common reason a Level 3 apprentice fails is not technical — it is the human transition from doing the work to being responsible for the work being done. The curriculum at this level reflects that.

By the end of the Development tier, the chef will be leading a section of the kitchen, mentoring commis chefs, and owning the consistency of what comes out of their station across every service. They will be confident in advanced production techniques, recipe development at scale, supplier management, and menu planning to budget. They will understand how to give feedback that lifts a junior chef rather than crushes them — and how to receive it themselves. They will be ready to step toward sous chef or head chef of a smaller kitchen, and to take on the next tier when they choose.

Fourteen to eighteen months. The mastery tier. The standard behind a sous chef or the head chef of a smaller kitchen. The end of the formal apprenticeship pathway — and the point at which the Academy’s relationship with an apprentice typically lasts beyond the qualification itself.

The Mastery programme delivers the full Marco Pierre White Learning Collection — with particular weight, at this level, on Hold the Line and The Seven Principles. The evening with Marco happens once during the programme: he cooks the kind of food the apprentice would cook in their own kitchen — in budget, quick, delicious, nostalgic — explains his thought process, takes their questions about food and life, and signs a book and a photograph for each of them.

By the end of the Mastery tier, the chef will be capable of running a brigade. Owning the menu — designing it, costing it, sourcing it, and standing behind every plate that leaves their pass. Setting the standard for the chefs around them, and defending it through every service. Carrying responsibility not just for the food but for the people who cook it, and for the people who eat it. They will be a Marco chef, in name and in practice — and the Academy’s relationship with them is meant to last for the rest of their career, not end at graduation.