How to Attain a Butler's Qualification

The road to the qualification starts with choosing a course. To settle the basic forms, Essential, 48 hours across a single month; to build on experience in service and go a step higher, Advanced, 72 hours across two months; with management or independence in view, Master, 96 hours across three months. Advanced and Master contain the lower courses, so you can enter them without experience. If unsure, work backwards from the level you want to reach.

—Saturdays and Sundays, six hours a day

Every class is on a weekend, six hours a day. Preparation and review are done with on-demand video, and the contact hours go to practice and questions. The timetable assumes you keep working, so there is no need to leave your job.

The examination is not written work at a desk; it is performed with the body in the classroom. For Essential the tasks are basic forms such as serving tea and coffee, table setting and receiving guests. For Master it takes the shape of a graduation dinner, in which several roles must be run at once. Situations that do not go to plan are slipped in on purpose, so memorised procedure alone will not carry you through.

—Where you look is what is watched

What surprises candidates is that the instructor watches not only their hands but where their eyes are. Put a cup down without looking at the person, and however precise the movement, marks are lost. Before beauty of motion, the test looks at whether you are watching the other person.

The words an instructor says most often during a course are "wait". The cup is moved before the hand reaches for it; speech begins before it is invited. Technique can be memorised, but timing is learned only in the body, which is why it is repeated in a small classroom.

—Understanding of confidence is checked too

One more thing is always checked before the examination: whether confidentiality has been understood. Not repeating outside what was seen and heard in training; not carrying away a client's information. This is a condition that comes before technique, and it is returned to again and again in the lectures.

Complete Essential and pass, and you are an Associate; Advanced, a Professional; Master, a Master. It is not a state qualification. But because the school that teaches and the association that certifies are one body, what you learn in class and what the examination asks do not drift apart. For a student, that is a great reassurance.

—An entry ticket, not a destination

I tell students that the certificate is not a summit but a ticket into the field. What is asked of a butler after certification is written on the association's page about the certification system.

Where a butler goes after qualifying is the field of THE BUTLER, which the association operates as its own service. The school that trains and the desk that sends out belong to the same association, so the road does not break. A scheme to pass butler-related vacancies to graduates is also being prepared.

—The previous trade is not asked

Age and previous occupation are no bar. The judgement of those who have worked in service, in offices or in medicine carries straight over into a butler's work. Brochures cost nothing, and a one-to-one consultation is free as well, online if you prefer; conditions and dates are listed on the official site.

Students sometimes write the night before an examination, usually asking to go over a form they are unsure of. My answer is always the same: do nothing new tonight. A form learned the evening before is the first thing to desert you under pressure.

—Three things for the night before

Three things belong to that evening: checking your own equipment for the morning, changing your gloves, and running the route through once in your head — entering the room, where to stand, which vessel to reach for first, whom to address. With the route in mind, the hands take care of themselves on the day.

—Sleeping well is preparation too

Sleeping well is part of the preparation. Intervals always shorten with fatigue: the movements quicken and the voice comes out ahead of them. Most of those who fail lose marks not on technique but on that quickening.

A grade is sometimes not given. When that happens the course is not begun again from the start. The record shows exactly which point was judged wanting, so a practice session is arranged for that point alone.

—It is usually the interval

Most often the sticking point is interval: the procedure is exact, yet the hand moves before the other person has been looked at. Only repetition mends it, but with a single target to mend, a few weeks are usually enough.

—Not treated as a question of capacity

A failure is not treated as a question of the person's capacity. The cause often lies in the teaching, and where it does the same account goes back to the instructor, so that the next student does not stop at the same place.

What I most often say to the newly qualified is that there is no need to stand out in the first year. This is not work that draws applause on the spot. Some six months on, a household notices that nothing has gone wrong. That is how good work shows itself.

—A first year of anticipating too much

The common failing of a first year is anticipating too much. Wanting to use everything learned, a new butler prepares what nobody asked for. There is no ill intent, but from the other side it looks unsettled. Learning to wait half a step usually takes about a year.

—Meeting the same year's graduates monthly

So that the year is not spent alone, the association keeps a place for continued practice. Even after a grade is given, those who finished in the same year meet once a month. The things that did not go well can only be told to someone who began at the same time.