Higher Apprentice Review

I am an engineering apprentice. The scheme takes place over four years and gives you different responsibilities and roles throughout this time. For the first year you are to spend 5 days a week attending a college in Epsom partnered with the company. They train you on a custom tailored IT course levelled at a HNC. After the first year has completed you are placed into your first 6 month placement. You do get a bit of say into what that placement is but ultimately the company chooses it based on what they think would be best for you. These 6 month placements continue for 2 years giving you a total of 4 placements to attend all of which in different business areas and locations allowing you to see the different parts of the company. Throughout this time you will also be attending college once a week on a specified day. During this day you are training for the HND qualification. The 4th and final year lands you into a single year long placement of your choice where you will complete your apprenticeship and assuming you are successful, be offered a job at the end. Throughout the first 3 years your main responsibilities are to get your college work completed and passed. You also have minor responsibilities to learn, develop and do different tasks on the placements you are involved in. These responsibilities however cannot be specified because they are unique to placements and so unique to every single apprentice that takes part in this scheme.

Throughout my time in this apprenticeship, I have developed a number of new skills, particularly during the first year when I was studying full time at college. However, in my own honest opinion, I don't think I have gained many new skills since. The college quickly became stale and failed at sparking any interest in its apprentices to want to complete the work or do well and the placements seemed to just merge together in repeating skills already gained. Some placements still do give some new skills but they are not as helpful because they tend to be placement specific skills that are otherwise useless outside of this one particular role.

Personally speaking, I can't say I really enjoy the apprenticeship much at all. I view it more as a job to get wages than a hobby or something to enjoy. At first, it was quite interesting learning new things at college, and the first couple of placements were different and a new experience too. Shortly after that point though, everything just seems to have gotten repetitive and the college in particular is really poorly managed which has added a great strain to the experience. Ultimately though, I don't really find the work I do interesting and I think that is the main point in enjoying a programme. If you don't enjoy what you do, it's hard to enjoy the programme. Don't get me wrong, the programme is really well built and I'm sure there are many people out there that would love it and enjoy it like a dream. I think it's about the people that do it with this question, if you don't find what the company does is interesting, you won't find the programme interesting.

I will be completely honest here. I don't think I have every felt completely valued by the company. There are spots here and there that make it seem like the company cares when they sign us up to events, to see a ship etc. It's all adding to our development so I can see the company valuing that. But for most of the scheme a lot of us felt a sense of abandonment. When we first started college 5 days a week we were told we would be visited at least once a month to check how we are getting on. That never happened. In fact, the person that said that we haven't seen for a couple years now. I also feel less valued because the company did make a number of promises at the beginning of the scheme that they didn't keep to which makes me feel less important. For example, they made out we would be able to get into any role at the end of the scheme, etc. Now though we are told that there will be a lot of competition to get the role we want, surely if a company is spending thousands on someone over 4 years it would be their best interest to get them where they want to be? Otherwise they are wasting a very valuable asset. I do have a number of other reasons and examples but I think that is plenty for this section.

On the companies side, the programme is very well structured, they planned out how many placements we attend over the four years etc. Contact different managers around the business to see who is willing to take apprentices. And get placement roles sorted in plenty of due time to make the move across placements seamless and tidy. The only thing I would bash on in terms of the company structure itself is the speed of sorting out issues. For one of my placements I needed a specialised desktop to complete work. This required me to order the pc from the company system. However, it took several months to go through the process of ordering the pc and it arriving to me so that by the time I received it, I was just leaving my placement. Onto the college side of organisation. In short terms, it is rather appalling. The number of things they have messed up throughout the scheme and the fact that they haven't learnt from their mistakes still is pretty bad. They just mentioned a few weeks ago that they forgot about a whole unit existing which we now have to rush to complete. Throughout the college time the support was also pretty bad but i'll save these details for the question that asks about that.

The support from the training providers being the college is pretty bad. Throughout the years we have been dragged down by a number of bad cases from the college such as bad staff that don't seem to understand what they are teaching or answer your questions, bad management where they will either decide something suddenly exists that didn't before or change the unit requirements halfway through teaching it, etc. Some support has surprisingly been alright, not a lot, but some of it. Most of it as said above though has been pretty bad. I've had more support from google.

On the other hand, the employers that being BAE Systems their selves have been excellent with the support. My apprentice manger in particular is great. She addresses issues and tries to deal with them as quickly as possible, takes feedback back to the company etc. and overall checks that you are getting on with the scheme alright at different intervals. The managers in each placement have been mainly good as well helping me to improve on placement specific skills etc. and giving constructive criticism. Overall I would say the company support makes up for the poor lack of it from the college side.

The salary changes every year throughout the scheme so opinions vary over time and between people. For the first year, we started on around £16,000. I live at home with my parents myself so this was completely manageable. The travel costs to college were quite steep and ate into what I earned quite deep but in general it was alright for myself. However, other apprentices in the same boat as me weren't so well off during this year. Some of them lived towards the north so they had to move down closer to the college. Having to pay for accommodation meant that they struggled much more with their money management compared to me. Moving on to the second year our pay raised to £19,000. Again for me this was just fine and it seems to be much more manageable for everyone else too. Additionally, because college was no longer considered my home location due to the 1 day a week change the company started paying for my travel costs increasing my earnings even further. Into the fourth year which I am currently on our wages have once again made a big leap this time to around £25,000. This is great pay for an apprenticeship. I believe one of the best apprentice pays available in the country.

There are plenty of different opportunities that the company provides, it is very flexible and offers a wide range of events, clubs, activities, etc. Some of these take place during work, during lunch breaks, and after work hours so there is plenty to fit into your schedule whatever way you choose to work. I find myself always looking for new opportunities outside and inside work too. I have previously told my employer/boss about wanting to try new work as well as getting involved in work possibly across at a different BAE Systems site too.

Yes

It depends on the friend really. If I knew they liked what the company did in terms of warships, military, vehicles, etc. Then I think they are much more likely to enjoy compared to myself. However, on the other hand if I thought the friend would be up to it, I would probably advise them to study a degree and try to go straight into a BAE job as a graduate as I don't think the 4 year apprenticeship is particularly enjoyable. I think that apprenticeships in general are great opportunities and they can help a lot of young people.

I would advise others to go through the graduate route more than this one as it would probably be much easier, enjoyable and just in general more comfortable to go through rather than this 4-5 year process. If they still want to go through this process though, I would wish them good luck and make sure they have braced their selves for the college they would need to attend. I think that you definitely need to have some knowledge of the company too and try to use this to your advantage when in an interview for example.