Students who enrol on the McDonalds’s A-level management course can expect to learn much more than flipping burgers.

The new nationally recognised course in shift management, approved by the Government yesterday, will provide training in stock taking, maths and literacy, hygiene, health and safety regulations, people management, marketing, human resources and recruitment.

The company expects about 3,000 of its 67,000-strong workforce to achieve the new qualification each year. They will include people such as Dean Burns, 20, from York. He started working part-time at the burger chain’s Blake Street branch in York at the age of 16 to help to pay for his bus fare to and from college.

With the support of his manager, he enrolled in an online maths course offered by the company to all employees and in a matter of weeks had passed a GCSE equivalent examination in maths. “I had eight GCSEs, but I could never seem to pass my maths while I was at school. At McDonald’s it is much easier because you do an online course at your own pace.”

Mr Burns has now secured a place on a university course to study paediat-ric nursing next September. “McDonald’s is the reason I got my maths GCSE and without it I could not have got my university place,” he said.

He has also become a fully qualified shift manager and intends to continue working at McDonald’s part-time during his university course, as the company allows students to transfer from their home to their university branches during term time and back again. “The skills I have learned are fully transferable to the work I hope to do in the NHS,” he said. “Most of all, it has taught me confidence in dealing with people.”

Mr Burns will be one of 10,000 university students working for the company. Although most of these are likely to leave the company once they graduate, a significant minority will stay on and become managers. Most McDonald’s staff remain with the company for only two to three years, but the company says that its aim is to ensure that they provide a uniform standard of service.

David Fairhurst, the company’s head of human resources in Europe, believes that investing significant amounts in their training makes good business sense. “Retention of staff is not our main aim,” he said. “Some 60 per cent of our employees are aged under 21 and we know that many will leave because they see working here as a stepping stone. What matters to us is engagement and loyalty, so that service is good, and the best way to get that is through training.”

Much of the training takes place on the job, with new staff being supported by mentors, drawn from the ranks of more experienced staff. There will also be some classroom work.

McDonald’s is one of four big employers to be given powers award nationally accredited qualifications (the others are the Ministry of Defence, Network Rail and Flybe). A spokesman from the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, which will accredit the McDonald’s courses, said that they were chosen because they were the first employers with a demonstrable record of offering good training to apply.

In the US, where 10 per cent of adults are said to have worked at a McDonald’s, some of the company’s qualifications are already accredited. In Australia every McDonald’s employee is guaranteed an interview with Qan-tas. “We don’t mind being seen as a stepping-stone employer,” Mr Fairhurst said. “The old IBM model of keeping your people for life is no longer relevant. It is not what young people expect and it is not the right strategy for a company like ours.”

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