Find out about The London Underground Apprenticeship Scheme

The London Underground Apprenticeship scheme gives school leavers a thorough grounding in the world’s most famous underground railway. Not to mention a guaranteed job on completion and a salary of over £33,000*. But what’s it like in reality? We spoke to two trainees to find out.

Hayley Gaskell, 18, joined the scheme in 2004

‘At the moment, we’re training to be signal operators but we get shown around all the different areas so we know what goes on in all of them. We learn how the signals work, how everything fits together and how it all goes in a circle.

You’re learning something new all the time. It’s mostly on the job learning but there are classroom bits as well. Once you’re qualified and you’ve got your NVQ, you’ve got loads of different things you can branch into. You don’t have to stay being a signaller. You can go and do office work if you want to. If you want to be a train driver, you can go for that.

To any school leavers thinking of joining I’d say don’t be nervous about coming into a big company. Because once you’re here you’re going to be treated like an adult. Whatever placement you go to, if you’re willing to learn something, they’re willing to teach you.’

Henry Akinseye, 17, joined the scheme in September 2003

‘My first year was just in signalling. I went to five or six signal cabins and I’m looking to get my signalling qualification this year. The basic qualification we get is the NVQ in signalling and then we do OPT (operational procedure training). In my second year, I’m branching out to do different things – train operations, customer service, connections and things like that.

I’m enjoying the whole scheme, because basically you can do what you want to do, within reason. If you want to do trains, you can spend a couple of days as train driver, if you want to do stations you can go and do that. There’s no restrictions.

I’ve just finished following the station manager at Whitechapel Station, observing their job and how they deal with day to day situations. You get to see how they deal with different types of people – it’s fascinating.

I’ve changed as a person since I started the scheme. I didn’t see the opportunities that there were in the company. Now I can see that you can do this or you can do that, you can earn this kind of money.

It’s a nice place to work. The atmosphere’s good, people are friendly, and even if they don’t know you they’ll make the effort to get to know you as a person.’

* Salary while training £10,013. Rising to between £20,468 and £33,799 on successful completion.