Originally posted October 12, 2018

Context

I’ve been on placement since April 30th doing a level 3 (A level equivalent) digital marketing apprenticeship. I’m almost half way through my year long placement and then it gets cancelled.

Communication between 3aaa, my employer, and myself has always been a bit lacking. I’m their third apprentice and this has been consistent. Each year the course content and process changes. Each time it’s been a surprise to my managers. My first couple of mentoring sessions were trying to understand what my course was so I could explain it to my managers.

Thursday 11th October

According to tes: The Department for Education refers 3aaa to the police and DoE cancels their contract with 3aaa.

15:00

Unknown to us, 3aaa enters liquidation.

16:25

I find out my class on Monday is cancelled.

We assume it’s due to sickness.

Unknown time Thursday

My placement’s finance manager received an invoice for the Oct-Nov-Dec quarter.

Friday 12th October

6:32

Liquidation news to me and my employers

10:15

I check my email and call my Mum.

10:32

Teacher says: actually, don’t email me, here is the government. Which is fair enough. I’m sure she’s busy making sure she gets paid/finds a new job/reduces the number of angry/sad emails in her inbox.

11:12

Arrive at work on my day off to talk about situation. Because the news was BCC’d my colleges and I weren’t certain the other knew. Seems like I’m staying until the end of my placement. They will be looking into alternative providers on Monday.

11:59

Read through the #3aaa twitter tag then tweet myself about my situation.

12:23

Dude from ITV replies to my tweet.

13:42

Rang ITV dude and found out they’d want a video call for TV broadcast and I’m not interested in that.

13:48 – 15:02

Read every article I can see until I can slightly understand. I made a timeline.

Monday 13th October

Something more important happens, a close family member is very ill. I had the day off to monitor their condition.

My anger dissapated and so did my motivation. When I got back the the government had emailed back saying they were working on it and that apprentice providors should not be contacting us.

Then what happened

After waiting a month for ‘the government to do something and find new providers’ we applied to a new one. I got accepted there was lots of paperwork and waiting for the government to agree to funding it. Four months after applying I am now an apprentice again.

I am sure I was lucky to be kept on after 3aaa disolved and even luckier that my placement kept me on for FIVE MONTHS through so many delays.

Full timeline of how long it took to get back on a course again coming soon.

This and the timeline are still my most viewed posts on here so people are clearly still looking for information.