Police Constable Ryan's journey video transcript

I'm PC Ryan Millington for Nottinghamshire Police and I did the PCDA Apprenticeship course.  

So I always wanted to be a police officer. When the time came for me to actually start with the police, they offered me the apprenticeship as opposed to the regular entry.

I thought it was a good opportunity so I took it. I'd never been near a university or that level of education so it was quite a big change for me.

So to get into the process of going through university level work and also learn how to do the the job as a police officer simultaneously. It was a lot of hard work, but it was very rewarding.

So during the entire apprenticeship, I had a lot of support and mentorship from in particular the course leader, Mark.

I had no idea how to write a university-level assignment. And so it was with a lot of help and support from Mark in particular who has been there the whole way.

And it was really through having that from Mark that I got from having never worked at a university level education-wise to coming away with a first class honours degree.  

Our university, University of Derby, I'm going to put it up on a pedestal. Because of the fact we have a really good close partnership with both  the forces we work with.

We get students on our programme who complete a really good first class honours  degree or a degree programme full stop.

They carry that on into the force and we get promotion quicker. We see more specialist roles quicker than other programmes too. Officers who now are on  murder investigation teams, traffic, CRD courses, you name it. I've even got one of our cops who's now on the firearm squad.

In the second year of those programmes, all my cops go on to secondments in different areas of policing.

They get the opportunity then to be able to go, I want to be a uniform police officer.

Okay, that's fine.  

But I want to join a firearms team, I want to join the driving squad, I want to be able to go on CRD.  

So those opportunities in that second year gives them the opportunity to be able to do that and see those in practice and make an informed decision about where they want to go. And that's what Ryan has done, and that's wonderful to see.

So the advice I'd give to anybody that might want to do the PCDA now, would primarily be to be prepared for a lot of hard work but very rewarding work.

You are working full-time as a police officer at the same time as you are obtaining the degree.  

So my roles and the tasks that I'm given have evolved a lot. I worked as a response officer while I was doing the first year of my degree.

And to the second year, I continued to work on the response policing team, but also spent a few weeks with the CID team, a few weeks with Child Abuse team, several weeks with the Neighbourhoods Policing team, which I would then eventually go on to join within the serious and organised crime world.

So I've conducted a lot of very different investigations to those that I did when I was on the front line in uniform.

Where I've coordinated a number of search teams and simultaneously go through front doors early hours of the morning getting hold of a good number of quite dangerous individuals, taking quantities of class A drugs off the streets and weapons, and all of that.

All of that's exciting every time I do it, no matter how many times I do it.

If I was going to describe the apprenticeship experience in three words, it would be:

Exciting, Inspirational, Challenging.

So I think we have to add that third word in because it's not the easiest thing to do. It's hard work.

If you were going to consider doing apprenticeship, a Police Constable Apprenticeship, yes, do it now with no question for me.

If you want promotion, if you want more specialisms, if you want to do a variety of things within the police service, and know that the work you are doing on the way to get there is contributing to how the police force works in the future, then why wouldn't you do a PCDA?

So, having done the PCDA, it's enabled me to get into the career that I always wanted to be in.

It's enabled me to see various different areas of business within the police. It's  helped me get to the position that I'm in now.

Police Constable Ryan's journey video

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