J
jaypp
Well this is the problem isn't it?
I can't tell you about electricians' training schemes because I am not one - or at least I wasn't officially trained to be one.
My trade is a Precision Engineer and that was a 6 year apprenticeship and I was trained hands-on by the business owner himself who was a sh!t hot engineer. Added to that was Day Release - one day a week at Gateshead Technical College 9am 'till 8pm for 4 years where we learned the theory and paperwork side of it and at the end of that lot I could do anything connected with machine work, hand fitting, pneumatics, hydraulics and some panel wiring.
Fast forward a few years and via several jobs including Machine Shop Foreman and I reached the giddy height of Training Instructor at a large engineering company where I was responsible for training the apprentices AND monitoring and recording their progress whilst under the guidance of foremen and other time-served skilled men on the shop floor so I was the bloke these apprentices cam to if they felt they were getting a bad deal.
The happy reality is that very few of them needed to because I was always on top of the foremen (machine shop, fitting shop, electrical shop and drawing office) to make sure that problems didn't arise in the first place! There is nothing like a bloke in a white coat with crimson collar rapidly approaching with a clip board in his hand to focus the attention of a machine shop foreman!!
I also had to liaise with the Technical Colleges to make sure there were no "issues" with the training of what I thought of as "my lads" there. and that was the thing - they were placed in my care and I did my best to care for them.
Anyway, this whole caboodle was overseen by the Engineering Industry Training Board which set the standards for training and constantly assessed the quality of the training and the quality of the instructors too. It was a system that worked extremely well for a number of years and then along came a grocer's daughter from Grantham who knew the price of everything and the value of nothing and closed the whole lot down and the mines too and THAT'S why we have all these half-baked schemes and couldn't care less employers nowadays.
That is my experience of the engineering industry and why I became self employed. I have no reason to suppose it was not just the same for the real sparks.
I cannot tell you what the answer is, other than try to find yourself a better boss, but I think you may be more successful in finding a Muslim Pope.
Trades Unions came into being for a reason
When I went to do 2330 was very disappointed to see the machine shop, welding bays etc., where me and 20+ other lads (and 1 girl the year before) did our 1yr eitb 'off the job training', completely gone. That's locally, 25 potentially brilliant craft/technicians per year that the engineering industry won't have, and 3/4 experienced engineers that are no longer passing on their knowledge.
am I correct in thinking that there's a decline in apprenticeships (and their quality/importance) across the board?
As a suggestion poult, send your boss an email stating your keenness to develop your skills. it might be that he'll read it when he's less likely to 'brush it off'.
