City & Guilds Training Courses

We are proud to be a City & Guilds approved training centre for the Award, Certificate and Diploma in Work-based Animal Care. We can offer a unique hands-on route to gaining your qualification, whilst working with all species of British wildlife. This is a practical course involving some heavy lifting, lots of cleaning of pens, cages and aviaries, plus homework too! These courses are ideal for anyone wishing to learn the basics and build their experience of animal husbandry, whilst working hands-on with wildlife in a very busy Hospital environment.

Course Structure
As well as covering the accomodation, handling and husbandry of animals of a huge variety of wild species, the course also focuses on maintaining a safe working environment and relationships with colleagues and visitors - making it a complete training programme that provides an ideal foundation for working in an animal care environment.
There are six levels of qualification (the Award and Certificate are a sub-set of units from the full Diploma and you don't need to do these before taking the Diploma):

Level 1 - Award, Certificate or Diploma
Level 2 - Award, Certificate or Diploma

All level 1 and level 2 course can run from
3 to 5 days a week.

In addition to the working hours in the Hospital, students will be required to complete homework, research and assignments in your own time. City & Guilds qualifications require the creation of a portfolio of work covering the hands-on and background learning covering all aspects of Animal Care.

Click here for details of the units for each level.

What can you do with your Qualification?
The combination of our nationally recognised qualification and the experience of working hands-on with wildlife at a world-leading centre can open all sorts of career opportunities or routes into further education that you might not have thought open to you previously.

Students from Tiggywinkles have gone on to work in kennels, catteries, pet shops & reptile specialists, animal rehoming centres, wildlife centres and zoos to name but a few. Some students go on to Veterinary Nurse training. Some go on to college or university to study animal management, conservation or degree courses. With a 90% pass rate, we are really pleased that over 76% of recent graduates from Tiggywinkles are now working or studying in the animal care industry.

Course Fees
Course registration fees need to be paid in full at the end of the trail period. To make the basic Award course affordable for students, we have reduced our admin fees to a mere £1 a day!
Click here for details of the course fees for each level.

Funding Support
Unfortunately, no funding support is available.

Days & Hours
Full or Part time available - working set days, which will always include one weekend day. Varying shifts on rota, working 8-4.30pm, 9-5.30pm, 1-9pm or 2-10pm. All students are required to work some evenings, giving you the opportunity to gain valuable experience with all aspects of our work. Unfortunately we cannot accomodate students who want to just do evenings after school or work

Entry Requirements
For the level 1 course, students require English and Maths GCSEs at passing grade, plus lots of enthusiasm and a strong commitment to training.
For the level 2 course you need the above requirements, plus a level 1 qualification or relevant work experience.

What do I need?
Students are expected to provide their own A4 folders, dividers, pens and a lot of punched pockets. Plus plenty of enthusiasm!

Start Dates
Courses run throughout the year, as a working hospital we do not run term time only. We are not a residential centre, so you will need to live locally (or rent locally at your own expense). Tiggywinkles only has a limited number of spaces available on our training programme. We always receive more applications than we can offer places to students, and therefore only take on students who we feel are really committed to the training process and achieving their qualifications. Preference for places will be given to full time students, with remaining space allocated to part time students.

Still interested? Please send your completed application form to us.