Advanced Practical apprentice Review

My role as an advanced practical apprentice is to work in the business to gain the skills and knowledge I require to become a qualified aerospace engine fitter. This means turning up to work every day and working on the shop floor when possible to get the hands on experience I require.

I have developed new skills during my time as an apprentice as well as developing existing skills that I already had. One skill that I have learnt during my time as an apprentice is how to wire lock components together. This is something I did not know before but will find useful in the future.

I enjoy my time as an apprentice but sometimes it is hard to enjoy the apprenticeship when you don't have the information about a placement you need, for example when your start time is for a new placement and a contact name for your new placement. All the people of the shop floor are friendly and make your time working with them enjoyable.

The organisation and communication is not great for apprentice's. An example of this would be when we came to start a new placement and we only had the information that was on the training plan. This wasn't brilliant because it only told us what the placement was and didn't give any start times or contact details for the leader of the placement. We also didn't get told the time of our inductions for our new placements.

I receive a fair amount of support from my employer and they provide meetings which we can attend for support. The only problem is that there is a lot of meetings and if you attend every one you won't be on the shop floor for long. Also, some of the meetings are at difficult times.

I receive support from assessors but only if I go and speak to them in person. Also, when we were going to start collecting evidence for our NVQ we had a brief overview a couple of months before we started to collect our business and then nothing afterwards. This meant we started in the business but didn't know what we were supposed to be doing towards collecting our evidence.

Having to complete the write ups does help me to remember how to complete the job but they are time consuming to write and then you need to et them marked and signed off on valid8 which takes up more time. Also, the qualification only looks at specific modules and doesn't look at every part of the engine.

There aren't many extra activities to participate in because of covid -19. However, before covid there were some activities but it was difficult to participate because of working shifts and this meant you were tired or at work when the actives were taking place, meaning you couldn't attend.

Yes

It is a good company to work for and they will try and help you when they can.

If you got a permeant job it would be good but the apprenticeship is very self lead and the communication within the apprenticeship is poor and this can make it difficult to complete the apprenticeship. But overall I would recommend the apprenticeship because it is a good experience and will give you a good qualification at the end of it.