I can only speak from experience
9-5 is the official time for training, and its a 5 day week, and no, no overtime is payable as a trainee.
When you do your front end turns, (for me I had 4 weeks in total in the first three months) then you are assigined a Driver, and cover his shift pattern to get you used to working all the different shifts, this becomes a four day week "Sort Of" as drivers work different days, we as trainees worked 4 days a week, and we had weekends off, again this was a pay thing for Sundays, and as trainees we were told to enjoy the weekends while we could
As a trainee, you get a staff travel pass, but the first one issued for us (Thameslink) only covered us on TL services, after the initial month pass we got a proper one, that we could use on several TOCs within the Brand of "First" and "Govia"
Hope this helps
With my Toc I get travel time from home station paid as overtime to and from training school
Can anyone tell me where the trainers centres are please ?
Locations and hours depend on the TOC.
Re: training hours, Southern are using a new e-learning based course called the Driver Learning Framework, which does away with much of the classroom hours and written exams in favour of simulator exercises, static traction, and practical driving. So there aren't set hours, you just get booked for practical activities on an ad-hoc basis and are expected to make up the remainder of 35 hours per week doing book learning on your own using the computer or iPad (with trainer support by phone, chat, and email). The main advantage to this is that you spend most of your instructor-led time learning by doing. The downside is that activities can be scheduled to take place at various locations and various times- earlies, lates, and Saturdays according to resource availability.
Re: overtime, Southern allows trainees to work Sundays (outside the working week) during their practical handling hours as long as their DI is booked to work
the Sunday and he or she agrees to it. The company allows it because you only get to see certain diversionary routes or shunt moves during Sunday engineering works.
So the working hours and conditions for trainees definitely depend on the TOC; it's not always "M-F 8-4 in the classroom" anymore.
That sounds like a pretty decent way to be to go through the training. Is that for around 9-12 months in duration?
Locations and hours depend on the TOC.
Re: training hours, Southern are using a new e-learning based course called the Driver Learning Framework, which does away with much of the classroom hours and written exams in favour of simulator exercises, static traction, and practical driving. So there aren't set hours, you just get booked for practical activities on an ad-hoc basis and are expected to make up the remainder of 35 hours per week doing book learning on your own using the computer or iPad (with trainer support by phone, chat, and email). The main advantage to this is that you spend most of your instructor-led time learning by doing. The downside is that activities can be scheduled to take place at various locations and various times- earlies, lates, and Saturdays according to resource availability.
Re: overtime, Southern allows trainees to work Sundays (outside the working week) during their practical handling hours as long as their DI is booked to work the Sunday and he or she agrees to it. The company allows it because you only get to see certain diversionary routes or shunt moves during Sunday engineering works.
So the working hours and conditions for trainees definitely depend on the TOC; it's not always "M-F 8-4 in the classroom" anymore.
That's the initial training, about five months. Then you go out with a DI for 225 driving hours (about 4 months depending on the depot) followed by core route learning (several weeks depending on depot).
After all that, you take your initial competence assessment (ICA, formerly known as ICOC or Part 6) where they assess your rules, traction, and route knowledge over four or five days of driving.
If all goes well, the whole thing start-to-key takes about 12 months.
You will find that some companies if not all have increased the hours with a DI to 265 this is down to the increase in the amount of incidents new drivers are having.
Companies do use the WCT as a tool to decide whom to hire. It's not pass/fail per se, but someone else's score was better than yours, so they chose to hire him or her instead.
You should ask them (or OPC) whether there's a limit on attempts at the WCT since it's not pass/fail.
Also, remember that next time you won't have to retake any of the assessments you passed, just the ones you didn't.
Really?
When did that change?
Companies do use the WCT as a tool to decide whom to hire. It's not pass/fail per se, but someone else's score was better than yours, so they chose to hire him or her instead.
You should ask them (or OPC) whether there's a limit on attempts at the WCT since it's not pass/fail.
Also, remember that next time you won't have to retake any of the assessments you passed, just the ones you didn't.
Surely it depends how well you did in the test
If there are loads of spelling errors it is ungrammatical the handwriting is appalling or you have not followed the instructions then it is understandable