Statement from Simon Hayter, Managing Director of Zigzags, MK

"Helen and Kelly approached us last Summer with their concept for NVQ delivery. To be honest, my first thought was to say no as I have had bad experiences with training providers in the past and have been very successful running my own training academy, offering our learners a National Hairdressing Federation Certificate of Apprenticeship. On meeting with them, I realised their concept could link very well with our approach to hairdresser training, and of course the opportunity for our employees to gain an NVQ can only benefit our business. We have now been working with AHA since November [2008] and have seen great results from this. The learners have responded well to them and they devised a learning plan to suit the needs of our business. Obviously you need to be flexible sometimes as they have set guidelines that they must adhere to, however we are now already seeing our learners make some fantastic achievements towards the framework. The beauty of this is that the training is all still our own. Helen and Kelly always maintain good contact with us and we meet regularly to discuss our trainees and we are always told in the first instance of anything that they plan to do. This enables us all to know where we are at and the development of our employees. We look forward to seeing our learners gain their NVQ and continuing to work with the AHA."