Digital Degree Apprentice Review

My role on a daily basis involves security monitoring of users and breaches, IT desktop troubleshooting, and communicating with users who are experiencing problems and utilising the ITIL processes to effectively communicate and solve requests or incidents raised by them. This is a great step in developing a working set of skills; both technical and soft skills.

I have developed a lot of existing skills, not only through the general business as usual (BAU) and project acitivites/work, but also in my time spent off-the-job training, in which part of the degree specifies 20% off the job training to be done in work. This equates to around 4 hours per week, and really helps with time develop skills.

I enjoy my time at Cheshire East Council very much. There are many opportunities to learn and the employers are lenient with giving time and space to work on the studies if necessary, as well as are accomodating to the 20% off the job work time. The work is exactly what I also want to do, and you get insight into many different IT teams and technologies

The programme is not extremely well structured, on both sides. However, you do definitely get support if you need it, and there is always someone there to help and accomdate for your needs, so overall it balances out and still makes it a great place to further your career. Of course this becomes an issue with the learning quality, but it is still excellent to advance your knowledge; a combo of work and education is brilliant.

I receive quite a lot of support from my employer. If anything is needed then an email will usually sort it out. You can liaise with the university (in my case MMU) if you have a problem at work, or you can liaise with work if you have a problem at university. It really is great and both do their best to help.

The support from the training provider, in this case MMU, can sometimes be quite minimal. Me and other apprentices have come to tentative theory that this is because we are degree (part-time) and not full-time students. The university requires a lot of reading and work to be done in your own time, and a lot of the studying, but that is due to only being in university one day a week.

I feel that the academic technical skills learnt are not that applicable to the job, as they are very outdated and still using outdated powerpoint presentations and technologies from the past. However, the soft skills you learn are more important and really do help you perform better as there are multiple tasks related to furthering your soft skills, as well as project management units, etc.

There used to be some extra-curricular activities, but there aren't really any anymore due to the start of COVID. There used to be workers who'd come in regularly to do fitness tests and give away healthy fruit/food, but this does not take place anymore. Extra curricular activities were very limited even before COVID anyway.

Yes

I would recommend CEC because it simply is a great place to work and is not always stressful like other jobs. The employers will support your needs, and a degree apprenticeship is the best way to learn. A free degree is amazing, and you get paid for the day you spend at university. It really is a great opportunity you would be lucky to get.

I would say make sure you investigate the council and their values before applying, although this can be hard to do. I would advise people to take the approach not that they know a lot about IT, but how passionate they are and how academic they are and want to succeed. They also want people who will stay after the 4 year degree has been completed, so think about saying you want a career with them, whether you do or not!