Software Engineer Degree Apprentice Review

Creating new features in the existing systems which involved the full SDLC (requirements gathering, design, dev, test, release) and giving updates to leads.

There's no information given to teams regarding the apprentice's skill level or background; some teams do not know that the apprentice has just completed sixth form and create tasks for a new grad, others realise this information and don't give the apprentice any tasks whatsoever until the apprentice finds a project to join themselves. HR have rapid turnovers, with apprentice leads averaging around 6 months until they leave, and do not provide documentation for later leads, so initial months are spent learning from the apprentices how the program is structured. Overall extremely chaotic, payrises and the transfer between teams/to a full time employee rarely go as the apprentice requests.

Mental health needs are managed through BUPA, with Occupational Health as an option to discuss adjustments needed in the employee's team. The reports that come from these meetings are not shown as important nor mandatory for the teams, and they do not have to take anything into account. HR never communicate issues for apprentices to teams, and the apprentice feedback structure is narrow and poorly regulated; some apprentices received all triannual reports whereas some weren't complete by team leads and nothing was done to chase this up. Mental health support is abundant but cannot change any issues surrounding work.

Unclear instructions surrounding apprenticeship standards meant that halfway through the apprenticeship all documentation used for university-industry communication had to be recomplete by the apprentice, and security limitations meant that this couldn't be completed on work systems despite it relating to it and requiring line manager sign offs. There was an unofficial attempt at "transfer of skills" sessions for apprentices to bring their knowledge from university and ask how to use it in their workday, but it was managed by an employee who left shortly after the first few sessions.

Generalised information is useful to understand the structures of professional environments, however many "apprentice-only" modules were poorly run, and other modules not considering the apprentice timetable. Overall there are good skills taught that can be applied, but pretty foundational and sometimes outdated.

No

There needs to be better organisation and decisions made with context when it comes to assigning apprentices to teams; some simply aren't fit to teach someone straight out of sixth form or do not have the bandwidth.