15 Aug 2024
Three students from St Albans’ Oaklands College have beaten off stiff competition from 600 other students from around the country to secure places on one of the UK’s most sought-after apprenticeships schemes.
Heath Richmond, 19, and Alexander Mason, 18, have secured places on aircraft engineering apprenticeships scheme with TUI, the UK’s leading holiday company, while Jamie Orfeur, 18, will be starting on TUI’s aircraft engineer workshop apprenticeship scheme – a brand-new programme.
Both courses are four years and will be based at the TUI hangar at Luton Airport. The aircraft engineering apprenticeship will give Heath and Alexander the chance to learn all aspects of aircraft maintenance and at the end of the course, they will become Civil Aviation Authority-qualified A licenced Aircraft Maintenance Engineers.
The new apprenticeship scheme that Jamie is on will focus on the very specialised aircraft airframe workshops based within the TUI hangar to ensure that TUI keeps pace with the ever-changing design of modern airliners such as the composite Boeing 787 Dreamliner. At the end of the four years, Jamie will be a certified workshop aircraft engineer.
Heath, Alexander and Jamie, who have been students at Oaklands College for two years, studying for the Level 3 National Extended Diploma in Engineering, will be starting their apprenticeship with TUI in September.
Fahad Mahmood, curriculum team manager for engineering at Oaklands College said: “Heath, Alexander, and Jamie are outstanding engineering students who have been offered a position at TUI on their aircraft engineering apprenticeship programme.
“With only 10 places available out of 600 applications, this achievement highlights their exceptional skills and dedication. Tutors are incredibly proud of their hard work and success.”
Claire Dolan, deputy principal strategy, partnership and business development at Oaklands College, said: “We couldn’t be prouder of Heath, Alexander and Jamie. What a huge achievement for our students. They have worked hard to achieve this level of success.
“The feedback from the TUI engineering team that we have received suggests that they are very impressed with the calibre of candidates from Oaklands, which is testament to the hard work of the teachers and support staff in their engineering faculty.
“We have a wide selection of engineering courses for different industries at Oaklands, including T levels through to HNDs. And we have an open day planned on August 22 at our St Albans campus for post-16 students who are undecided on what educational path to follow this September. We have more than 300 courses to choose from so there is something for every future student to study at Oaklands.”
