Engineering degree apprentice Review

My Job role involves reviewing and interpreting test data. The data I review is a reflection of how the car will be driven by the 90th percentile of customers (the most damaging driving the car should expect to see). Then the data is processed to see how the forces seen on car components will affect their life span. This job is mostly desk based and involves a lot of work in processing software and working in excel to produce graphs and ratios.

As far as my job goes, I have had to learn new skills to be able to use the software used for processing data and I have developed my excel skills as I have used it for developing graphs and I have used it to help improve current systems in place in my home department and departments I have been on placement with. As for what I have learnt from the educational side of the apprenticeship, I have developed some practical skills from the NVQ we do in first year (some more helpful than others).

Now that I have started university I am enjoying the scheme a lot more. First year, when you were in college, you were very isolated from the company and everything there felt like a tick box exercise. You also found yourself within a bubble with your JLR colleges as you couldn't access anything work ran and the college didn't run anything like societies that were well advertised or accessible for people in our position. The closest experience you got to university life in the first 2 year were the halls at college, but the halls had strict policies and you could feel like you were being monitored out of hours. Also the communication between college and JLR wasn't particularly great (improved more so between Uni and JLR but I think that's because the uni is trusted to run independently and the apprenticeship team stay out of the course), many of issues with the college were flagged to the apprenticeship team and nothing ever seemed to really get done and you'd often get conflicting information from the 2 parties. Not all the apprenticeship team are bad and now that college is no longer being included within the degree scheme, I think the experience for new apprentices will be a lot better. I personally have found that work have been extremely supportive and my current work based learning manger (manger for the study side of the course) has been keen to help me with my studies and projects I take on. I know however others have not seen the same support and this support can vary between departments and work based learning managers (WBLM)

As mentioned before, I'm not convinced college ever felt organised and I think there structure was mostly made up as they went along. University has high visibility on its structure and what my time with them will look like and I know what to expect with them. For in work, my department, team, manager and WBLM have all worked together to provide a structure for placements for me to go on and a development plan for me to get the most over the 6 years the scheme runs for. However I know there is a huge amount of variance in how apprentices time in work is structured. There seems to be no guidelines for managers as to what support they should provide an apprentice and even how they should treat apprentices and some end up being treated as engineers (so no placements and little time in work for studies).

As mentioned above, I am very lucky as everyone on the JLR side is very supportive and I only have to ask for time in work to study and they will re arrange to allow for it. They are also always very keen to hear what you are learning about and people from around the business are pretty much always willing to talk to an apprentice to help them with an assignment or project for college/university.

Colleges support was nearly non existent. Trying to get dyslexia support throughout my time there was exhausting and the support from the lectures varied a lot. University is a lot better. The lectures are all very enthusiastic to teach and are very quick to answer emails and questions. My only complaint about them is that the personal tutors for uni is very disorganised and most tutors don't really understand our scheme and there isn't time allocated to meet them so they cant provide the support they would with normal uni students.

I feel like the majority of my learning has come from my job role and I haven't been able to apply my much of what I have learnt from college/ university as its not really been to applicable as they cover such a wide scope of things, its not all to releveant.

JLR have a bunch of internal networks you can join and go to events and they have other events such as JLR challenge which is an annual orienteering competition. Also as part of Warwick university you can join any society you like and during my induction week we were given time to go look around the society and sports fairs so you could sign up if you would like too.

Yes

Over all I think its a really good opportunity and will allow you to get a good degree and good work experience. I think as well JLR is full of opportunities as a company and mostly it is down to what you make of the experience and how far you are willing to push yourself.

JLR value work ethic over grades and as long as you make the requirements, you will have a good chance of getting in if can evidence good work ethic and enthusiasm. I would also warn that doing an apprenticeship is hard work and long hours and you wont get as much as a uni experience as you would going to uni due to how much time the course takes.