200: The magic number

The NDT apprenticeship scheme has seen a great start to 2022, with a number of new organisations utilising the NDT apprenticeship standards to help upskill existing staff members, as well as recruit new starters. I am extremely pleased to say that there are now over 200 NDT apprentices currently going through apprenticeship training programmes. It has been five years since the launch of the NDT apprenticeship standards and it seems as though we are seeing a ‘snowball effect’ in their utilisation across broad industry sectors. I have recently received several enquiries from organisations wishing to utilise the NDT apprenticeships scheme from all manner of industries, which is incredibly exciting and extremely positive for BINDT and the NDT industry as a whole. Tube manufacturers, steel stockholders and marine restoration specialists are just some of the new types of organisation I am seeing move forward with NDT apprenticeship programmes. So, I think we can say that word is finally getting out regarding the great structured training programmes for NDT that have been created.

As I have mentioned the magic 200 landmark, I thought it would be appropriate to give an overview of the latest apprenticeship numbers, across all programmes, and explain what this means for industry, as well as to highlight recent end-point assessment (EPA) success.

Currently, there are 206 NDT apprentices across all programmes:

30 apprentices on the NDT Operator programme;
106 apprentices on the NDT Engineering Technician programme; and
70 apprentices on the NDT Engineer programme.

This means that over 348 NDT Level 2 certificates (PCN/EN 4179/CSWIP) will be issued for the above NDT Operators and NDT Engineering Technicians over the next couple of years as the apprentices go on to complete their full training programmes. As there are 70 NDT Engineers, this means that there will be 70 BSc (Hons) or BEng (Hons) NDT degrees completed, as this is a mandatory qualification forming part of the NDT Engineer standard. The above statistic means that somewhere in the region of £4 million of government/levy funding is being spent on NDT apprenticeship training. I think that we would all agree that this is a massive win for the NDT industry.

To further support this statistics update, I wanted to shout out about the recent EPA success. Seven EPAs have been undertaken so far in 2022 and all apprentices have successfully passed, with six receiving distinctions and one a pass grade, with many more to come over the next few months. The EPA is something that I will be focusing on in the next apprenticeship update to guide and assist the apprentices when they reach this final assessment point in their apprenticeship journey.

Please note that the views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not represent the views of Skills Training UK or BINDT.

Sam Cunningham is with Skills Training UK and is a member of BINDT’s Education & Professional Development Committee, which oversees the development of the NDT apprenticeships.

Employers in England looking to recruit an apprentice can find up-to-date guidance at: www.gov.uk/recruitapprentice

Details of the current apprenticeship vacancies in England are available at: www.gov.uk/applyapprenticeship

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