Level 6 apprenticeships#
Personal reflections of a mentor#
I’m very in favour of bringing people into civil engineering through apprenticeship schemes. I suggested the idea to my manager back in 2014 and was very pleased when he asked me if I’d be a mentor for some apprentices.
Full time university#
I personally took the full time education route into consultancy getting an MEng from Swansea university and joining Mott MacDonald as a graduate on a training scheme working towards chartered membership with the ICE. However, if a young person came to me asking how to get into civil engineering I would advise them to take the apprenticeship route. I don’t think school and university education prepares young people well for the world of work. It gives you a certain amount of knowledge but it doesn’t:
help you learn how to work in teams, education/academia is very individualistic
give you experience solving problems with multiple solutions or in defining the problem you’re trying to solve yourself.
Furthermore, university is now very expensive and I don’t personally think it is good value for money. Most practising engineers will tell you that they only use a very small proportion of what they learnt at university on the job and that they had (and still have) a lot to learn in order to do their work well.
Apprenticeships#
the good#
Apprenticeships solve the problem of delaying a young person’s entry into the working world. Apprentices start at a younger age to learn how to work in teams, solve real problems and learn on the job. Apprenticeships also put money in the apprentice’s pocket rather than landing them with a substantial student debt which will impact their earnings for a very long time. Starting out earlier also means that apprentices can potentially get to more senior positions more quickly since they have 3-4 years more work experience than a full time university graduate of the same age. All being well a civil engineering apprentice can also gain professional membership with the ICE at a younger age than the industry average.
the bad#
Despite the very real benefits there are also some problems with the Level 6 civil engineering scheme. Much like full time university degrees the apprenticeship degrees teach a lot of content that is not of use to the apprentices. Some of the universities offering the level 6 civil engineering apprenticeship degrees are under resourced and unable to deliver a quality education. It is also a very big problem that the apprenticeship is really demanding, probably overly so. The end point assessment (EPA) is an IEng review, this is a high bar. Many apprentices are getting to the end of the term of their apprenticeship and passing their degree, but they haven’t developed as a professional engineer to the point where they’re ready to sit their EPA with a reasonable expectation that they can pass it. This creates some real conflicts of interest. From the perspective of the universities it is really bad if their apprentices finish their degrees but don’t sit their EPAs because the universities don’t get the final part of their fees until the apprentices sit their EPA (the funding is released whether the apprentice passes or fails). OFSTED also measure the university’s performance based on the proportion of apprentices who sit and pass their EPAs. On the part of the employer and the apprentice, they both agreed to endeavour to complete the apprenticeship including the EPA and will have signed contracts (the terms of these contracts vary significantly). The ICE wants more members, but it won’t accept just anyone who applies. Before an apprentice can apply for their EPA they must first have:
Completed their initial professional development and had it signed off by their mentor
Had their supervising civil engineer sign of that they are ready to prepare for their EPA
Had their membership development officer sign of that they’re ready to prepare for their EPA
Got two ICE members to support (or sponsor) their application
Write a report of good enough quality that it won’t get rejected by the ICE assessors before the assessment
Prepared for the EPA with mock interviews, written exercise practice and study of the things an applicant will be expected to know.
ICE members should not recommend people for membership unless they believe the person (apprentice) is working at the standard expected of an incorporated member. Doing so would go against the ICE code of conduct. The guidance from the ICE is clear, if someone isn’t ready, give them more time and support them to get to the level they need, don’t just push them to sit - and fail - the EPA. Unfortunately, some universities (for the reasons given above) are pushing their apprentices to go for their EPA whether they’re ready or not. Employers, apprentices and the ICE are pushing back. Another practical difficulty is the requirement on employers to provide 20% of the apprentices paid time as off the job training until the “gateway” is passed. To pass the gateway requires two main things:
Completion of the degree
Completion of initial professional development.
This becomes a difficult issue for employers if their apprentices haven’t managed to sign off their initial professional development within a reasonable length of time after finishing their degree. Once degree lectures have finished 20% of the job training is very onerous for the employer to provide. One possible mechanism to avoid this issue is to evoke a break in learning. This is a mechanism in the apprenticeship contract that allows a pause in the apprenticeship including the need to provide 20% training. However, OFSTED counts breaks in leaning as poor performance so this is not an option universities are keen for employers to take. Even when employers and apprentices work hard to get ready for the apprentice to sit their EPA in the apprenticeship timeframe the issues above can crop up because it is a really tall order for an apprentice to get to the level required by the ICE. Unfortunately the issue is made considerably worse for apprentices in companies where they don’t get the support they need to prepare for the EPA.
some suggestions#
The section on the bad has ended up considerably longer than the good but I wouldn’t want to give the impression that I think civil engineering apprenticeships are a bad thing. From an ideological perspective I am fully behind them, I just see very clearly some large problems with the implementation as it stands. However, I think it would be a relatively easy improvement if OFSTED and the universities could relax the timeframe they are currently expecting for completion of the EPA.
I haven’t got my head around the new integrated Level 6 apprenticeship scheme, hopefully some of the issues with the current scheme will be dealt with by the changes (I’d welcome comments from any readers familiar with the proposed changes). However, at the last apprenticeship symposium I attended there was considerable uncertainty amongst the delegates about how the new integrated EPA would work.
a possible alternative approach to apprenticeships#
It has become almost unthinkable in the world of civil engineering consultancy that someone could become a professionally qualified civil engineer without a degree (preferably a masters). However, as I said earlier, you will struggle to find a practising civil engineer who will tell you that the majority of what they learnt at university has proven useful to them in the world of work. I am of the opinion that a degree only seems necessary because a high level of expectation exists in the industry that engineers ought to have them. The ICE has a route to membership called the technical report route which doesn’t necessitate a higher education qualification. The ICE takes the role of assessing the applicant’s theoretical and technical knowledge and understanding and expects to see a similar level to what a university graduate should have. There would need to be a significant culture shift in the way many consultancies operate to make it a possibility for someone to become an incorporated or chartered civil engineer without a degree. Such an approach could start with an apprentice being taken on as a Level 3 or 4 apprentice. Once they have their BTEC or HNC and EngTech qualification, if they have shown aptitude and potential to take on higher levels of responsibility they can be given engineering tasks as well as or instead of technician ones. If they want to go the technical report route the company could employ them on a four day per week contract to allow them a study day to gain the considerable technical knowledge they’ll need. This would need effort on the part of the company and apprentice to ensure the time was well utilised and the apprentice was covering all the necessary areas. However, such work could (in part) be directed towards developing materials that could be of use to the company. For instance, as the apprentice learns about geotechnical principles they could produce technical guidance or template calculations to demonstrate their understanding which could be published internally for use in the company. I see no reason why a motivated apprentice with a supporting employer couldn’t train engineers in this way without a need for a degree or masters. Thomas Telford had no higher education. He came from an impoverished background and learnt what he did through self motivation and being as good as he could be at his job. I’ve often wondered what he would think about the current status quo where a university qualification is close to being a mandatory requirement for becoming a chartered consulting engineer. I suspect he wouldn’t have approved.