Content of Core Electrician Courses, how do we change it?

The difference between education and training :-)

Is part of the problem that traditionally the things not taught on the course would be covered by practical experience that apprentices should  have gained while working with an experienced electrician. With the poor quality of many apprentice schemes/employers this experience for many is probably poor. Coupled with the many people  doing the courses without supervised practical experience we end up with "qualified electricians" missing some of the practical knowledge and skills. 

I agree with you about some of the more complex electrical/electronic fundamentals which we should be aware of but do not require in-depth knowledge  to function competently as an electrician.

I was recently called to a customer who had no hot water as their gas boiler was awaiting repair and the immersion heater did not work. They had called out a local medium sized electrical company to fix the immersion. The customer told the "electricians" who came out that he thought the plumber who had installed the boiler and the new thermal store had not connected the immersion as he was not an electrician. The electricians looked at the installation and told the customer that the immersion was connected but it was connected through the boiler wiring and they could not fix it! When I looked the heat store had a thermostat wired to the boiler circuit but there was no wiring to the immersion heater. A length of suitable flex to the heat store manufacturers specification to the heat store solved the problem and a happy customer. Was the problem a lack of: training, knowledge, skill or: laziness, ignorance ?

A better sign up process that runs through the employer requirements thoroughly. Too many sign ups of companies that are not able / interested in fully supporting the apprentice journey with the required site experience.

I share your pain

I am so not sure about dropping 1st principles and diluting down the teaching of electric motor theory. By all means re-examine stuff which is obsolete but do not remove the building bricks and replace them with sand.

When I did my C&G 200 series course back in the mid 70's we had the 1st year full-time with broad-based training based on the old EITB model. Some of this was effectively redundant. We were taught about Ward Leonard set-ups, D.C. Faceplate starters, some of which were still in use in the local coal industry. We were also taught about intrinsically safe installations too.

Where I used to work we had 2 old Butler horizontal planers with 20ft moving beds. These were Ward Leonard set-ups due to the finer speed control you got back then with D.C. motors. No IP protection in panels back in those days. The machines dated back to the 1940s when the place was set up as a shadow factory for the war effort, so lots of live D.C. stuff to brush your tender pinkies on if you weren't careful.

Faceplate starters? Never ever saw one in the wild. Intrinsically safe installations? This was aimed mainly at coal mines rather than petrochemical plants, and since this wasn't the sector I worked in, I never had to deal with one for real.

A.C. Theory, magnetism etc were useful when it came to applying knowledge gained through hands on experience. I did the 1st year 'Technicians course' (T1) in parallel but found it staid. The only processor I leaned about apart from resistors, rectifiers capacitors and transistors was the 555 timer chip. Again, of very limited use. Back then, if we didn't know what a chip did, we just unsoldered it, replaced it with the correct I.C. socket from RS and kept on swapping chips until we got a piece of kit working again - photocopier engineering style. Most of the time we never really understood how we got something working again!

So, even back then, there were redundant legacy anomalies still being taught, even if hardly relevant most of the time.

C&G should really be the drivers. The problem is, you have too many organisations trying to offer the same thing but all at differing levels of academic rigor. This needs to change before embarking upon what could be a ruinous voyage to dumbed down rubbish at a not very cheap price.

The topics on the “irrelevant and obsolete” list were generally topics covered in the O-level Physics course and exam back in the 1970’s, so when I did these topics as part of the C&G 2360 I already had prior learning.

Are these topics covered at school these days?

i must say that I too think some of the stuff on your 'irrelevant' list certainly isn't and indeed the harder to solve EMC aspects of things like VFDs mean that I'd add transmission line theory to the list, and also things like  Dali lighting controls, CAN busses and so on.  

Depends what sort of electrician you intend to produce of course - the sort that can drink tea and change light bulbs and nothing else really does not need to know a lot, as someone else has already designed the circuitry and got it going To my mind they they don't really need the qualification either .

To take account of instructions does not mean follow them mindlessly of course - and even if BS7671 said that, I'd say to simply add that to the list of regs that only apply when they suit the situation. The sort of guy who can be dropped in to design and install anything from a new socket to a heating controller to a set of theatre lights needs a bit more between the ears. Sure, not all will be up to the task, not all will qualify but that correctly represents ability. As in WJs post above, there is the world of difference between repair technician and design authority material.

Mike

nicemark said:

That means All the electrical accessories you buy will have Manufacturers recommended Torque settings for the screws.  Most students don't even know what a torque screwdriver looks like let alone how to set one or use a calibrator

That’s just something that should be taught in the workshop whilst carrying out practical work, though it’s very rare to see any torque requirements stipulated apart from in consumer units and distribution boards.

Two days ago on Tuesday I installed new lighting in a bathroom and I did not even use a screwdriver, all I needed was a tape measure, pencil, cordless drill, hole saw, a pair of combi wire cutters/stripper and a pair of long nosed pliers.

I marked out and drilled the holes for the down lights, pulled the cables through and connected them using their push fit connectors.

In fact I have done a couple of jobs like that in the last week.

Protective devices with push fit terminals are already available in Mainland Europe, things are moving on, screwdrivers are not so essential now.

Examining the wiring diagram of a face plate starter involved investigation and the theory of how it works. Useful stuff.

Z.