PAT testing is a bit misleading actually. As evidenced by the current vs 4 code of practice, it's now called in service inspection and testing, which recognises that more than just portable appliances now need testing / inspecting, such as various fixed appliances also.
That said, however, you may find that the course is tailored for anyone, ordinary people and electricians alike, so will cover training for just portable appliances, without covering fixed appliances which will require safe isolation procedure to be undertaken, which ordinary people won't do, so they'll only be able to test plug in appliances; which means you could only be doing part of the testing job on a site.
So, given who the course is probably aimed at in terms of skill level, you won't cover electrical principals in much detail, it'll be fairly low level stuff - formal visual inspection, and plug it in to test and let the tester do it's thing and read off the results. In short, swot up if you want but don't vex yourself as they'll keep it simple.
PAT testing is a bit misleading actually. As evidenced by the current vs 4 code of practice, it's now called in service inspection and testing, which recognises that more than just portable appliances now need testing / inspecting, such as various fixed appliances also.
That said, however, you may find that the course is tailored for anyone, ordinary people and electricians alike, so will cover training for just portable appliances, without covering fixed appliances which will require safe isolation procedure to be undertaken, which ordinary people won't do, so they'll only be able to test plug in appliances; which means you could only be doing part of the testing job on a site.
So, given who the course is probably aimed at in terms of skill level, you won't cover electrical principals in much detail, it'll be fairly low level stuff - formal visual inspection, and plug it in to test and let the tester do it's thing and read off the results. In short, swot up if you want but don't vex yourself as they'll keep it simple.
