Pursuing a degree apprenticeship with Jaguar Land Rover
A former Rydal Penrhos pupil gave a presentation to our current pupils about degree apprenticeships as an alternative route to university, based on his own experience training and working with an iconic British automotive brand.
Rydal Penrhos has a proud tradition of nurturing outstanding engineers; Ollie Sharples (RPS 2011-13), a Project Engineer at Jaguar Land Rover, kindly shared some of his technical wisdom with our current crop of budding minds. Among them was Ethan Bytheway, Year 12, who kindly agreed to document the talk and share his observations with us:
“I recently attended one of Oliver Sharples’ talks on degree apprenticeships as an alternative route to university. This was specifically tailored to engineering and closely tied to his own experience.
“Ollie is a former Rydal Penrhos pupil, who studied Maths, Physics and Geography at A-Level. He initially wanted to follow the typical university route but eventually decided to go into one of the relatively new degree apprenticeship courses, training with Jaguar Land Rover (JLR).
“Instead of the typical £9000 fees and concurrent student debt, this course gave him a good salary, a large and varied amount of work experience, and access to all of its associated university facilities (from the University of Warwick). At JLR, Ollie had access to facilities beyond the reach of an ordinary student. These included tear down stations, a design studio, a test track and an acoustic testing facility. Alongside all this JLR arranged facilities overseas to test products in hot, cold or extreme climates (for example, the sand dunes of Dubai).
“For Ollie (and for most degree apprenticeships) the course is roughly structured in three parts. In Years 1 and 2, you follow a normal university schedule and work during holidays. In Years 3 and 4 the workload increases before the focus moves predominantly towards work for Years 5 and 6, with much less time devoted to study.
“One of the main differences between the apprenticeship route and university, Ollie mentioned, is that you are paid to be at work and paid to complete assignments. This principle closely ties the course to a work environment, perfect for preparing you for your eventual full time job, which is guaranteed after the apprenticeship is over (provided all necessary work is completed). With attendance checked and assignments keenly marked, there is a real drive for the individual to achieve.
“When Ollie was asked if he would pursue a degree apprenticeship again, he said ’absolutely, it’s the best way to go’. With the opportunity to earn a salary, gain work experience and pursue university opportunities, what’s not to like?”
We would like to thank Ethan for his excellent account. Perhaps he will be part of the next generation of Rydal Penrhos leavers to follow an engineering or a degree apprenticeship pathway. Only last summer, a pupil from Rydal Penrhos’ historic Year 13 cohort, Rocco Molica-Franco, overcame a highly-competitive selection process to secure an apprenticeship with electronic engineering company Qioptic, which will lead to a BSc (Hons) in Electronic Engineering.
Rydal Penrhos would like to thank Ollie for taking the time to talk to our pupils; we look forward to the next steps in his Rydal Penrhos Sixth Form success story. If you believe that your professional insights might be useful to our pupils, we would be delighted to hear from you; please contact alumni@rydalpenrhos.com or phone 01492 530 155 and press 3.
