As part of our series of case studies we caught up with Aytam who completed his Apprenticeship with GoActive which is the Leisure Arm of St Helens Council in Merseyside.
Aytam was already employed as a Fitness Instructor and was based at Queen’s Leisure Centre, one of the multiple GoActive sites located throughout the St Helens Borough when he started his Apprenticeship. We asked him what made him sign up for an Apprenticeship “I volunteered to do it, I knew I didn’t want to be a Fitness Instructor forever and wanted the opportunity to build on my skills and knowledge and the L3 Team Leader/Supervisor Apprenticeship seemed to tick all the boxes” he told us.
Apprenticeships are all about developing Skills and Knowledge, so we asked Aytam what skills he thought he’d gained through his training “The biggest skill was around Project Management, I’d had no experience of this previously and it was really useful to learn how to start and submit projects and then going onto learning how to run and deliver a project once it gets approval” he explained. “As for knowledge, I think it was the theory aspect of what motivates people, I obviously knew about how to treat people, but the psychology about how to get the most from your team and how the dynamics of working with a team was really interesting, I learnt a lot” he added
Functional Skills are a part of all Apprenticeships, so we wanted to find out if they’d helped Aytam, he told us the following “I used the BKSB resources, they were useful as a recap and memory refresh, I hadn’t realised how much Id forgot since leaving school, but having the opportunity to refresh my memory was useful”
Aytam passed his EPA Assessment in February 2022 so we asked him about his EPA experience “I knew what to expect, I’d done some practice presentations with Caz my Training Consultant from FLM Training, so I felt ready for it” he told us.
Aytam is still working at the Queens Leisure facility and is currently mentoring other St Helens Council Apprentices, his knowledge, skills and experience’s developed whilst on his Team Leader/Supervisor Apprenticeship will be invaluable in helping and supporting new Apprentice’s to get the most from their programmes.