Marshall Skills Academy is preparing to onboard its largest training cohort ever, while simultaneously delivering apprenticeships for a record number of aerospace organisations.
More than 70 technical and business apprentices will start in the 2023 cohort. In addition to representing Marshall Skills Academy’s largest intake to date, this will also bring the total number of concurrent apprenticeships to an all-time high. In addition to technical roles, programmes will span a range of business support fields including health and safety, quality, regulatory, information technology, procurement and estimating.
Meanwhile, Marshall Skills Academy will be working with more organisations than ever. In addition to ongoing delivery of apprenticeships for Marshall Aerospace, Marshall Land Systems and Bombardier, three new participants will be joining the training programmes for the first time this year: Aircraft Restoration Company, Stansted Aerospace, and Titan Airways.
Since all three new partners count Marshall apprentice alumni among their senior management ranks, their decision to choose Marshall Skills Academy to deliver their apprenticeships reflects very positively on their own experiences.
Remarking on the standards of excellence consistently delivered by Marshall Skills Academy, Paul Thomson, General Manager for Bombardier’s UK Service Centre, said: “Bombardier UK made a carefully considered decision to form a strategic partnership with Marshall Skills Academy to deliver our apprenticeship program. Marshall-trained apprentices are widely regarded as the best in the industry.”
“Marshall offers an established and comprehensive training program backed by a wealth of experience in the development of young people,” explains Titan Airways Line Maintenance Manager Lee Taylor. “We chose Marshall safe in the knowledge they will deliver well rounded individuals ready to take on the challenges of keeping our fleet serviceable 24/7.”
Notably, the incoming cohort will be the first to undertake Category A UK Part 66 Aircraft Maintenance Licence (AML) modules as part of their knowledge building. As a result, they will be able to apply for full Category A licenses at the end of their programmes, ultimately enabling them to certify line maintenance.
Other new additions to the training curriculum include a bespoke programme for Stansted Aerospace, which is a Part 145 component maintenance and repair organisation. From a training perspective, this necessitates a high level of hand skills competency around a narrow range of activities. Since there is currently no apprenticeship standard which meets these specific needs, Marshall Skills Academy’s bespoke programme for Stansted Aerospace is designed to ensure that apprentices achieve levels of competency directly mirroring Part 145 requirements for full aircraft maintenance.
The Marshall Group has been upskilling and training talent for more than 100 years, during which time it has delivered over 21,000 competent engineers into some of the UK’s most skills-intensive sectors. Founded in 2020 as the dedicated education and training arm of the Marshall Group, the mission of Marshall Skills Academy has been to continue to grow the Group’s talent pipeline through apprenticeships whilst using its expertise to help other employers by training their apprentices.
Given increasing awareness of the value and importance of apprenticeships and the sustained success of its apprenticeship programmes, Marshall Skills Academy continues to expand and invest in its capability. Starting this year, all Cambridge-based practical and classroom apprenticeship training will relocate to a spacious and fully modernised facility, while plans for further facilities will be announced in the near future. Outside the UK, the skills academy model has been expanded into Canada with the launch of an “Earn as you Learn” pilot programme.
Marshall Skills Academy has also been leading industrywide conversations about the looming engineering and technical skills shortage, having gathered representatives from the aerospace industry, academia and public sector organisations last month for the inaugural Marshall Skills Summit.
Several Marshall apprentices have received awards and accolades for their outstanding achievements both personally and in the workplace. Alumni include three World Skills UK medalists and one World Skills International winner. Four apprentices were shortlisted for the Cambridgeshire Apprenticeship Awards, two of whom won highly commended certificates, while one of Marshall’s trainers won an Apprentice Mentor Award in 2021.
12% of Marshall apprentice alumni have progressed to senior level roles across various aerospace and defense companies in the UK and beyond. Several have been honored with MBEs for their services to aerospace, and this is testament to the incredible start they received as apprentices in Marshall’s training workshop.
If you’d like to learn more about Marshall Skills Academy’s engineering training programmes, please get in touch.