Reply To: Engineering Industrial Training Board EITB

[Mike PooleParticipant @mikepoole82104]

My apprenticeship was from sept. ‘72 to aug.’76 run under EITB guidance. The first year was run as a series of 5 week blocks with one block split into 2 weeks welding and 3 weeks sheet metalwork. Three 5 week blocks at the Tech.College were also part of the first year. The second year was when you got to choose which trade to follow and to an extent the most successful in the first year were given first choice. The electrical instructor called me to his office for a talk and from being a passionate metalworker he turned me to the dark side and electrical maintenance. The second year was supposed to be another year in the electrical training workshop with another set of block release at tech. The instructor returned to wales at Christmas and decided to go contracting with his brother so we were sent to the shop floor about nine months early. We moved to various areas in the factory which were all quite different, Press shop, Paint shop, Tool room, and various body build areas which were very different, we were making 5000 Marina bodies a week on one floor and 8 Rolls Royce bodies a day on another. The Rover P6 body was the last floor to run piecework in the factory and was a very different atmosphere, if a machine broke down the operator would be straight round to fetch you to fix the machine but the measured day worker didn’t care and would wait for someone to notice they had stopped. Our apprenticeship finished on your 20th birthday or after three and a half years so being August born I had an extra 5 months on apprentice pay compared to my mates. My absolute hate was the logbook and skill sheet task, I filled most of it in in the last few months with a number of semi fabricated jobs to get the skills ticked off. Some people produced beautifully written and illustrated logbooks but mine was an appalling mess to be hidden from any EITB inspection. I still have my EITB certificate of training somewhere but my indentures mean more to me. I think I still have the EITB module J2 and J22 books somewhere but much of it will be of little use these days.

Mike

Edited By Mike Poole on 02/02/2022 13:32:54