L6 Engineering Technician Apprentice Review

As a Level 6 Engineering Technician in my 3rd year, I work 4 days in placement and 1 day up at Birmingham City University. Roles vary depending on what placement you are in, as some may involve office work which is more admin based, and others may involve production and being more involved with the physical and technical side of production.

The apprenticeship programme is well structured, and all the apprentices in each year group are clearly aware of what each year involves. 1st year is mainly college, learning towards your foundation degree qualification and doing functional manufacturing skills such as welding, electrical, pneumatic etc. 2nd year, start in placements at departments related to your role on a 3 month rotation, with 1 day in college. Then in 3rd year, you will continue to do placement rotations and 1 day in university working towards yours manufacturing bachelors degree. 4th year, is the final year, you will be in your final placement where you most likely will be working in permanently as well as doing a final year work based project at university. Finishing, with a university and apprenticeship graduation ceremony.

There is a lot of support, whether it's your placement manager, apprenticeship manager, HR, Union, etc. Everyone is more than happy to listen and help you out in any situation, certain departments are dedicated to areas such as mental health support, pension, training for additional skills such as forklift driving etc.

From a college perspective, there wasn't as much support as we had expected, it was mostly us having to do everything ourselves, but once we had more stable tutors we had more improved lessons that helped. From university perspective, the tutors are very supportive and do consistent reviews/feedbacks when it comes to assignments. Though we did face some issues with student finance but that was eventually sorted out.

The content that is taught both in college and university is very relatable to at work, there is a lot of information that you can apply in tasks and research and its the same other way around, you can use a lot of work scenarios to help apply what you been taught into perspective, helping you understand it better.

Yes

It is a company that provides a well organised apprenticeship, where you get really good experience as well as competitive benefits such as a the car scheme.