Ofsted highlights outstanding behaviours and attitudes on Southern’s drivers’ apprenticeship scheme

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Southern Rail’s driver training apprenticeship school has ‘outstanding behaviours and attitudes’. That’s the verdict of an Ofsted report into the Selhurst, London-based training centre, which received an overall effectiveness rating of ‘good’.

Senior Apprenticeships Manager David Jackson, for parent company Govia Thameslink Railway, said: “We’re delighted with our report. This validates the massive effort we’ve made since switching to the apprenticeship programme five years ago.

“We are so proud of the apprentices who are learning to drive with us, and the culture of positivity and mutual respect that has been highlighted with an outstanding grade for overall behaviour and attitudes.”

There were 135 apprentices on the driver training programme at the time of the inspection in May.

The report, which can be read here, says apprentices:

• flourish in a culture of positivity and mutual respect;
• have constructive and professional working relationships with their trainers, driving instructors and each other;
• are committed to their training with consistently high rates of attendance;
• are proud to work in the rail industry;
• feel safe while training.

It says Southern’s trainers:

• structure learning skilfully;
• make effective use of a variety of assessment strategies.

Its leaders have:

• taken effective action to improve the teaching of functional skills.

Ciaran Moynan, Southern's Operations Training Manager, and his team were instrumental in securing this classification.

He said: “I’m so proud of the team as it’s not easy to look at ways to continually improve how we deliver our apprenticeship, especially during such an extremely busy period where we’ve delivered an unprecedented amount of courses for new drivers over the past 18 months.

“This isn’t a normal training course. The experience that our apprentices get with their trainers gives them space to grow and develop a whole range of knowledge, skills and behaviours to become strong all-rounders and not just drivers. It was great to see this being recognised in the report and the grading we were awarded.”

ENDS