What is happening?
After careful consideration and consultation, we have made the difficult decision to close the Salon in its current commercial format, this will happen on the 22 July 2022
We will be moving to a student-led model which will offer far greater opportunities for our students to practice the skills they have learned and will be more financially sustainable. This will enable us to provide an even more immersive environment for our learners, by delivering hair and beauty services from their industry-equipped, professional training salons, and continuing to work closely with our many industry partners and employers.
Why are we doing this?
Our salons were established to provide opportunities for our students to develop their skills and to generate a surplus to reinvest in the education of young people in our communities. As an education provider, everything we do needs to be for the benefit of our learners. Currently, we do not feel the salons are offering the students at Reading College enough opportunity to hone and refine their skills. This, coupled with the financial impact that the pandemic has had on our operations at the salon, means our commercial salon has not been able to reach a viable financial position.
What does this mean for you?
The appointment, check-in at reception, consultation and treatment will now be managed by our learners under the close tutelage of their lecturer. The Salon at our Bracknell and Wokingham College has successfully run in this format for many years.
This will allow our learners to get a closer-to-real-life, practical experience of working in a real salon, so that when they leave college, they will be more work-ready and with employability skills. It will also give them a chance to work on a more varied range of styles and treatments in a busy environment on ‘real’ customers.
We appreciate that as a customer you will be helping our students to hone their skills, and to recognise this you will receive a very competitively priced treatment.
As these are mostly younger learners your appointment may take a little longer than before, and the students may need to check in with tutors occasionally. However, we believe this is an exciting opportunity for the learners and for you as our customer, to get access to highly skilled aspiring hair and beauty students at incredibly reasonable rates.
From September onwards we will open a broader set of sessions at all college campuses, with dates to be communicated soon.
What if I already have appointments booked?
If you already have an appointment in the diary after 22nd July, we will be in touch to rebook this for you. Meanwhile if you have any questions, please phone, or email the following and we will try to help:
Telephone: 0118 955 4777
Email: Alison.Smith@activatelearning.ac.uk
