About Us

Above Bar College has been providing high quality hairdressing training for salons in Southampton, Salisbury and surrunding areas for the past 12 years, as well as supporting schools with careers events and workshops.

The college is a specialist college that only provides hairdressing training, all the staff including the directors have always worked in the industry and therefore have an insight into all aspects from training to salon ownership.

The college has always been proactive to the changing needs of the hairdressing industry and education: this is more demonstrated in the Young Apprenticeship programme for 14 - 16 year olds which was introduced in September 2006. We were one of only six centres across the country who successfully gained a contract to run the programme, and we have since gone on to gain further contracts in 2007, 2008 and 2009. The success of the programme was further confirmed when in 2007 one of our students was named Apprentice of the Year in the first national competition organised by Habia, the lead body of our industry.

We are currently supplying training Apprenticeships (Level 2) and Advanced Apprenticeships (Level 3) to approximately 250 students who are employed in 200 salons in Hampshire and Wiltshire along with 60 Young Apprenticeships students from a variety of schools in Hampshire.

In the summer of 2008 phase 2 of our refurbishment plans for the premises was completed with the installation of two completely new salons and lecture rooms with PowerPoint facilities. This completed a two year programme of a total refurbishment of the college which started in 2007 with a new heating and air conditioning system being installed along with a new computer suite for the students to access the online testing facility, therefore eliminating the need for assignments and paper based tests.

The college is continually striving to improve the quality of training provision and reinforce the links with schools to continue to meet the needs of the young people in the Southampton and surrounding areas, also to work with employers to meet the needs of the hairdressing industry.