Degree Apprenticeship Review

Day-to-day work for the business is pretty decent. You are given a lot of trust and responsibilities to manage as you want. Most people are very helpful and supportive. There are a wide range of activities to get involved in from process monitoring, problem investigation and improvement activities. Good time management skill are essential in order to balance all the different ongoing tasks. If you struggle with this (like I did) then support is freely available to improve this skill. However, a constant struggle is the IT systems. They are extremely poor making for a frustrating user experience. Frequently internet speeds drop to 100kb/s when working remotely which is completely unusable.

Definitely! There is a lot to be leant from existing employees, training courses and mandatory L2, L4 and L6 qualifications. Juggling many different requirements and tasks can be quite challenging or overwhelming for some. Communicating with different functions is an essential part of the job, as well as a good understanding of the engineering process (both physically and theoretically). I also learned that the starting salary of £13,125 is not competitive by any stretch of the imagination. It is almost impossible to live on when over 50% of your monthly wage goes to rent due to the high cost of average quality housing in Bristol. If you want a better starting salary go check out DE&S (MOD), Airbus, GKN or first bus. They all pay higher.

Simply: the business placements are fun and engaging. The training and apprentice development side is shocking. For the whole of year 2 I had an 11 hour university day which was a absolute slog. It was exhausting so I retained very little of the information. University lectures were very sympathetic and agreed that the day was unreasonable. We were told to treat this as a standard working day by apprentice management. We were paid for 7.5 hours but expected to be there for the whole 11 hours. This effectively means 3.5 hours unpaid work per week. I received little to no help with my level 2 qualification. I was expected to just get on with minimal oversight and no marking of the work I produced. There was a rocky start to my Level 4 qualification as no-one was able to confirm what units I should be taking. Once this was sorted the L4 qualification progresses fairly well. There were regular reviews and the marking was completed in a timely manner. However, after a change in NVQ assessor I am yet to receive any feedback on the work that I have submitted (waiting over 2 months and counting). The degree is okay. Again first year was similar to the L2 NVQ experience as it was delivered by Weston college. Since moving to UWE the quality of teaching has increased and for the most part assessments are returned within 20 working days. Several apprentices (including myself) have experienced mental health problems due to the high workload, high expectations and extreme stress levels. Financial problems due to the low pay coupled with all the other issues left some people in very dark places. Most apprentices question wether they want a career in engineering anymore after the experience they have had so far. To this day I do not have certainty that I will be able to pass my apprenticeship EPA due to having the wrong qualifications. I wish I could mark this as 0 stars.

It's painful. The apprentice training contract is signed by three organisations that continually dispute the content of the contract. Apprentices were given the training contract outside an exam hall approximately 9 month after starting and 3 minutes before the exam. We were told to sign it or we would be removed from the apprenticeship. Since then it was discovered that these contracts contained the wrong information and they are still being disputed 2 years later. Therefore, apprentices have completed the wrong qualifications due to poor paperwork and management from both the company and Weston college. The whole thing is extremely disorganised with constant change in a bid to try and gain some form of order.

Managers and colleagues in business placements are very supportive and helpful. You are encouraged to work independently and given appropriate amounts of responsibility. Mental health champions are embedded throughout the business and are always available for a chat. I have formed some very strong working relationships with various employees and feel comfortable approaching colleagues with problems that I face both inside and outside of work. Support from the apprentice development team is offered, but not always available due to the high workload of the apprentice team.

There is a very mixed bag of support in this area. My first year was at Weston college which was an absolute disaster. It is definitely the worst educational experience I will ever have due to the practically non existent support. Supervision was minimal and no staff would take ownership of our issues. This was mainly down to the staff being overworked as they were all knowledgeable people - they just didn't have enough time assigned to support us correctly. Year 2 to 4 training is provided by the university. UWE is much more organised and structured with mostly good lecturers that are supportive.

The degree qualification gives a basic understanding of the concepts to be applied within the workplace. It would have been nice to go into more detail in some areas as I feel some subjects were very superficial. Most of the time spent completing the Level 4 NVQ is dedicated to twisting my workplace projects fit the rigid and specific criteria. Some units are barley applicable to my job role making it extremely difficult to accrue naturally occuring evidence.

The Apprentice Association works had to organise events that are enjoyable and accessable by all. Pre-covid this included sporting events, payday meals, nights out and many other activities. The AA has continued to be active throughout the covid pandemic running virtual quizzes and events. Fundraising for local charities continued throughout this difficult time, via virtual events, with over £13,000 being donated at the end of the year. I will be looking forward to the return of face to face AA events.

No

I would not recommend a degree apprenticeship with Rolls-Royce. The company (specifically apprentice management) is not fit or ready to manage degree programmes. Many of the programmes have been offloaded to external training providers as a result of this. Maybe it will be good in a few years but for now I would recommend doing a degree apprenticeship with another company. I wish I had. I would recommend either direct entry or the practical apprenticeship as the wider company is pretty good. There are a lot of training opportunities and support for career development.

If everything you just read hasn't put you off then here are my interview tips... The interviewer will most likely be a business manager (engineer) and not someone from HR. It's okay if you don't know the answer to a technical question that they ask because they are more interested in your thought process. Remain calm and talk through what you are thinking. Be prepared to talk about what interests you about engineering and what sparked that interest. I had a nice down-to-earth chat with my interviewer sharing stories of my previous engineering experience.