Engineering Technician Review

Year 1 - College day on Mondays, doing maths, material sciences, electrical and electronic principles and communications, then 4 days a week down in the workshop, doing welding, hand fitting, PLCs, fluid power, milling, turning, electrical or electronics.

Coming straight from A-levels, I can confidently say I learnt a lot of new stuff, mostly the workshops I have done, which broadened my skills in engineering.

I enjoy myself at work, especially when I get to work on group activities, working with my colleagues makes it so much for.

I think that structure is fairly organised, we are usually on 4 weeks rotations, and 90% of the time, we know what we are meant to do during the day.

I like the fact that at Plant Oxford there are 2 separate offices for BMW and Bmet, which helps employees resolve academic inquires or issues, as well as any work related issues for apprentices, where they get to reviews and discuss their work life.

All tutors are satisfactory when it comes to being ready to help, we are adequately well prepared when it comes to working towards completing an assignment, however the quality of teaching can be poor, and not always coherent to curriculum, especially during Maths lesson. I also believe the structure of the college days can be improved, by making it more interactive.

I don't think that the information we are given during the college days helps much when we are downstairs in the workshop, I believe they do not relate to each other, but I feel like I have learnt so much more in the workshop, not just skill wise but also a lot of useful information.

I am part of the charity team, which I think has done really well when it comes to organising events and trying to raise money, for the charity CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably), however I do believe that it can be more organised and also more invested in.

Yes

It's an ideal environment for those who are willing to work hard and get out of their comfort zone, you get to learn a new set of skills in very short time frame, which I think it's really important and good to have. I would also say it is a place which gives you the opportunity to grow and get a broad range of people, and great chance to network.

Make sure you're willing to put effort and time in the apprenticeship, because as much it is fun and super exciting, the workload can get a lot heavier than expected, and keeping up with due dates and make sure to plan for every assignment is imperative.