Craft Apprentice Review

I am a third year apprentice so my role involves spending 18 months on placements at different electrical departments around site. This mainly involves shadowing your mentor and them teaching you what they do and how they do it and when they've got confidence in you, you being able to to get involved and doing electrical works and testing.

Electrical knowledge and skills through what weve learnt in the academy to using those skills on site in placements. Communication skills by moving through different placements around site you have to learn how to be a team member and be confident as you can also be in meeting with people a lot higher than you.

I enjoy the programme quite a bit, the instructors and mentors are caring and want to teach you everything you need to know. The programme was was disrupted heavily by COVID-19 and lockdown however they have tried to continue our programme as normal and ensure we don't miss out on the progress and that we do everything before ending our apprenticeship.

It is organised into two parts 18 months in the apprentice school/skills academy learning the basics of your trade and everything you need to now before you go out onto site for placements and also while you are doing your college course. Then 18 months on 3 month placement around site at different electrical departments.

Our employer gives use both educational/ work support but also pastoral support. The instructors are there if you ned help with your work or finding something difficult to learn and will help you until you understand but also there is a support network within the instructors and the apprentice school for mental health support and support for anything troubles your facing outside of work and they will help you any way they can.

Basingstoke College of Technology don't help you at all and most of the teachers are not qualified to teach electrical engineering so they are trying to learn it as they teach you. There was one good teacher that tried to help us and support us towards our grades but the rest we had to do ourselves.

The college qualification while in the apprentice school seem irrelevant as it doesnt have much to do with what you're doing at work and the apprentice school teaches you everything that you need to know. However once you get onto site and you start dealing with motors and generators it becomes a bitt more relevant but that is only a small amount of the qualification still. A lot of the qualification is CnI based and we are electrical maintenance

There is an apprentice society that runs and plans activities for the apprentices and use to run a tuck shop but lockdown and Covid stopped a lot of that.

Yes

Get paid a lot for the work you do and it is a lot higher than the normal apprentice rate. It is a start of a career in a company that has very good job security, every other friday off, a really good amount of holiday time and great pension. Also if you want to change later in your career to something else on site they will be open to helping you do that. Also they will pay for higher education if you want to do it.

Be yourself, they don't really care about grades, as they know school isn't for everyone, they care more about what you are like as a person and if they think you have the right personality for the job. They take a long time to get back to you after interviews so don't lose hope.