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When Phil McDonnell gained a mechanical fitter’s apprenticeship at BAE Systems, Barrow, he was starting on a path to qualifications that, altogether, could take him more than 10 years to complete.

Yet the dogged learner, now 27 and part way through a Bachelor of Engineering degree, seems unphased by the amount of studying he still has ahead of him. He gives the credit to his partner Emily Wearing. Phil said: “She is the one that’s encouraged me to carry on with my studies. She’s in HR management with the NHS, and she’s just completed her masters, so I have got to catch up with her.”

Phil calls the first four years “a stepping stone to further my education.” He began working at BAE Systems in 2005 when he began his three-year apprenticeship along with school leavers. He said: “I applied for the apprenticeship scheme in the same way school leavers do and went through the same process they go through which starts with an online application, two tests and interview. That was followed by a contract and I then became a BAE mechanical fitter apprentice. For the first six months I was at college full-time, completing an NVQ level two in Performance Engineering Operations. After that I went to on-the-job training in the yard.
“In the last two years I completed a workbased NVQ level three in mechanical manufacturing and engineering and my national certificate in mechanical and computer-aided engineering on day release at Furness College.”

All that gave Phil the entry requirements to progress on to an HNC in mechanical engineering. He started a Bachelor of Engineering ordinary degree (known as BEng) last September. He said: “It’s a brilliant course. The facilities are good and the lecturers are very clever. The way that the course is structured to allow us to do it around work is good. BAE and Furness College work together to achieve that.”

For his BEng, Phil does one day a week from 9am to 7pm at Furness College, studying three subjects, plus a night school one evening a week. He said: “If all goes well, I will then be able to progress on to my honours, which is a further two years after that. Once I have completed my honours, ideally I want to progress to a masters degree and then work towards Chartered Engineer status.”

Learning while earning has suited Phil. He said: “It’s been good because I am earning a wage and training while I work. I could have gone to university and done it in a shorter space of time but doing it this way, when I finish I don’t have the debt. And it’s local – it allows me to stay close to my family.”

Phil was sanguine about juggling work, family and studying. He said: “Because of the amount of work we can get done during college time it’s not too bad. It did get in the way of my social life a little bit in the build-up to the last exam, but the hard work pays off in the end. If I didn’t do it this way it could have been three night schools a week.”

A lot of the learning Phil is doing now is building for the future.
He said: “The workload is quite considerable – but if you put the work in, it’s not necessarily too difficult. Certain aspects of it relate to what I do at work but because it’s a technical qualification what I am learning now I won’t actually put into practice until I get a job that requires it. The job I am doing now has very little theory involved – it’s more hands-on. When I progress to a role within engineering, that’s when the theory becomes more applicable.”