In his latest column, Graham Hendra reflects on what his recent stint as a lecturer has taught him about training.
I’ve just completed a three-year stretch teaching refrigeration and aircon at Eastleigh College. I thoroughly enjoyed it – looking back, it has actually been one of the highlights of my career. The thing about the course syllabus from City and Guilds, it that it is alarmingly sparsely defined and no course materials are provided, so it is pretty much up to the teachers to do what they think is right.
The course is divided into two: Levels 1 and 2 are delivered in one block over two years and level 3 is another optional part. Some 75% of students only do Levels 1and 2.
Level 1 and 2 are broken into ‘practical’, where the students install some kit and do the F-Gas tests and the ‘theoretical’ where they do fridge theory and learn how the kit works.
The area that I think needs working on is the filler material. The first term is wasted on health and safety – the students already have a skills card covering this, so why waste time repeating it? Then in the science part we spend lots of time on irrelevant bits like materials, which is only relevant to people who build kit. No one builds kit in the UK anymore.
Personally I would divide the course into two a different way: Year 1 would be for installation, as installing air con and fridge is a particular set of skills. You don’t need to know how the unit works, or the science behind it, you need to know how to install well; eliminate the leaks; and set the unit to work.
If – and only if – you want to learn more, you should continue onto Year 2. This would show how the kit works, focusing on fridge theory; electrical theory; testing; fault diagnosis etc – a completely different set of skills.
Most engineers either do ‘installation’ or they do ‘service’. The two are separate skills but the current format of the course doesn’t recognise this.
The second year is dominated by The Portfolio, in which the student has to submit photos of themselves doing both installation and service work while out at work. This is a crazy scheme because it again assumes all students do both sets of skills when they are at work, but they don’t. And even more crazy is that there is currently no online portal in which to upload all this. Instead, all students have to print the portfolio out and then submit it manually, in a ring binder. This in an era where every other student in further education works on a laptop.
Lastly there are the exams, which are all multiple choice, with no test papers, and you can retake as many times as you like. If students are not engaged in the course, they can just keep going until they pass.
One positive from the lack of a tight curriculum is that it gives the teacher the chance to keep the course current by including the latest trends and technology. The flip side of this is you risk missing bits that end up in the multiple choice.
If it was down to me, I think digitising it all would help a lot. A decent text book to run alongside the course wouldn’t go amiss either. I was going to write one myself but, as you may have heard, I have been busy with my own series of books, as I look to become the Richard Osman of the Heat Pump sector (and I will be flogging my books at the InstallerSHOW in June).
Despite these criticisms, I think is a good course if it is delivered well with imagination. But with some pruning and reorganisation and modernisation, I reckon it could be epic.
And one more point to bear in mind: I was lucky enough to do this without depending on the salary in order to eat. Because in that classfull of apprentices, I was the worst-paid person in the room.
For all these reasons, surely something has to change.
