Based at the AMTC in Coventry, Donna is our Training, Quality and Compliance Lead, supporting our expert trainers to deliver high quality teaching and support to our learners and their employers. She joined our newly formed Quality and Compliance Team in March 2022, and intends to use her experience and expertise in managing large-scale education provision to help MTC Training become the number one training provider in engineering and manufacturing.
We caught up with her just four months into her new role to find out why she’s passionate about apprenticeships, what she’s enjoying most so far, and why she already feels proud to be part of the organisation.
What is your role at MTC Training?
In short, I’m here to help us become the number one training provider for engineering and manufacturing apprentices, working to make sure our expert trainers to do the best job they can in supporting our learners to achieve their qualifications and life goals.
I joined MTC Training in March 2022, and I’m part of a newly formed team with a renewed focus on ensuring that we continually deliver a high quality programme and experience for all of our learners and their employers. My previous role as a curriculum manager for a large college team means that I’m experienced in managing educational provision, and I’m particularly passionate about teaching practises – my key strength, my ‘thing’, is helping people to teach better. I’m hoping to bring all my expertise and previous experiences to help make a positive impact here.
What do you enjoy most about working at MTC Training?
The people are great, everyone has made me very welcome, and the facilities are amazing. The apprentices have been very welcoming too, and are all well-mannered and very polite.
It was clear immediately that there’s a really strong sense of purpose here, which is so important if we’re going to work together to achieve our goal of becoming the top provider of engineering and manufacturing apprenticeships. I love the flexibility at MTC Training – I feel trusted to work autonomously to do my job successfully, in my own way, and with the support of the people around me.
I’m also enjoying the fact that there’s a clear route of progression for apprentices, so you can see first-hand that you’re having a positive impact on their development and their journeys.
Why is MTC Training so important for local businesses / industry / people?
From an education perspective, I believe completely that post-school education is really important to society. I can see that the service we’re delivering at MTC Training will fill the skills gaps that UK industry is experiencing, and will make a real difference to people’s lives. Being local, and having family in the manufacturing sector, it’s clear on the ground that there are significant skills challenges, and events over the last couple of years have only exacerbated this. It makes it even more important that we continue to focus on being the best we can be, and to provide positive support and deliver real impact to the industry.
How is MTC Training different from other training providers?
It all comes down to the quality of what we do. The fact that we focus one area of provision (engineering), helps us to build a strong quality offering. We have small group sizes, which means our trainers can give individual support to our learners. We’re also committed to making sure our apprentices have all the core skills they’ll need to build on for the future learning, ensuring they’re fully prepared for the workplace before we let them loose back onsite with their employers.
In your opinion, what are the benefits of choosing an apprenticeship?
Clearly the level of debt that you’d accumulate from a university degree is significant, and very different to an apprenticeship, where instead of gaining debt you receive an income at the same time as getting experience and qualifications. It’s also great that when you’re learning within an apprenticeship, you can immediately see how your new knowledge and skills apply in the workplace. Our trainers put a lot of effort into making sure the skills our apprentices are gaining are relevant to the jobs they’re employed in. This all means that by the time you’ve completed your apprenticeship, you’ve got a huge amount of skills and valuable experience that you can apply in your workplace and future career.
Why should someone choose to study at MTC Training?
An apprenticeship is a fantastic start to a career in engineering with great progression options – we see our apprentices grow and achieve greater things.
Learners can have confidence in what we offer – we’re really proud of the quality of our apprenticeship programme. We only work with employers who we trust and who we know will look after their apprentices and provide them with real development opportunities, both within and beyond the apprenticeship.