Itīs going to be an interesting thread I think!
In Germany students will learn ATC theory for 9 months followed by 6 months in the simulator. APP/ACC are both part of the sim sessions, although a decision who will be going where is only been made after about three months sim training if I remember correctly.
The simulator resembles a part of the Frankfurt FIR (oh, sorry, Langen of course
). Thatīs a good thing for the guys and gals working those sectors later, but not so good for all the others I think. In my EBG (group of sectors Iīm working) the structure of traffic flow is much more chaotic than in the sim which makes it very hard for beginners fresh from the academy. The washout rate accordingly is very high, although it could be better if we had the resources to conduct sim training specifically for our sectors.
Ideally the general sim training would be cut to 4 months and after that it would be another 2-4 months sim at the traineeīs unit. Unfortunately we donīt have the people for that with extra shifts every other day and the extra work hours accounts going through the roof.
This leads to another problem in our training system. Since our active controllers are busy most of the teachers in the sim are retired guys (some of them ex-supervisors) who havenīt worked real traffic for a long, long time!
Then, the simulator runs during the last couple of weeks training are just not workable in real life....unless you know what will happen next (which every clever student will), and that of course is of arguable help.
So the students come to their unit having "worked" (out of memory) 60+ movements in an sim-ACC environment but will still be lost with 20 movements in real life. Not a confidence builder I think...
About the trainees themselves I have to say that I have the impression the new guys just donīt have the same kind of interest in the job we did...although itīs just been 8 years since I have started OJT (that might be typical of any older generations view). ACFT types and performances are a complete mystery to some of them, let alone cockpit workload etc.
They canīt even always be blamed since a lot of things we enjoyed like fam flights are just not part of training anymore. That also applies to fully licensed controllers of course who after a couple of years just forget about the other end of our work. If you donīt have professional pilots as friends you often wonīt talk to them for years other than on the radio.
Over the past three years the trainees that got relieved were either incapable of doing the job (too slow mostly; the picture was ok, but they couldnīt give clearances according the priority, got way behind and thus lost the picture) or not able to work in a team (one actually told us she prefers to work for herself rather than in a team...unbelievable).
The coachesī work also has to be reviewed and I do see it quite critically. The main problem I guess is that everyone is going to be OJTI regardless of qualification. The official OJTI-training is very good, but I think that after passing the test some people just forget about everything they learned there.
Also our companyīs TWR/APP seperation concept and the subsequent movement of the old Dusseldorf APP/ACC to Langen has proved to be a problem. In one of our EBGīs the average age must be about 26 or so....the old guys stayed at DUS TWR, the young ones went to Langen. I think itīs not good for training (and safety?) if there are hardly any older guys around.
Ok, too late now...