At risk of starting another really long reply, which I don't really want to do...My view has never been that the old-school route CAN'T be done any more, it's more "whether it's viable to do so" or not. For me, I believe the only people it is viable for now are those that can pay their initial training costs without taking any debt, who are also prepared to lead no kind of life for several years until they finally get to a decent wedge. This rules out anyone that needs to service debt, anyone that wants to have a reasonably nice accomodation, anyone who wants a reasonable car, anyone who wants holidays or nights out with mates, anyone that has a family etc....so with so many ruled out, why are we complaining about the lack of people prepared to do it that way? That route is dead or dying, because as training costs rise, the rewards of doing it "the hard way" become ever more unworthy, in comparison to paying to get into Ryanair and having £40k+ within two years.
two final points - 1 - I Never said it was impossible to do training whilst working, clearly that's possible and a very practical solution to funding training....but how you fund training is not the point, the point is that it will still costs you a min of around £50k, whether you have that in the bank, whether you earn while you learn, or whether you borrow the whole blinkin lot! It's THAT £50k you have to get a return on.
2 - The sparkys salary - I would agree...I think the website have it wrong...I even said as much, but I'm only reporting what's ....errr....reported! TBH, even if you double it, it still isn't much cop and I doubt you'd be affording more than about 3 hours a month....so fairly moot anyway - the point is you're still looking at more than 4 years just to get to being able to train for a CPL... (link here:
channel4.com - Bricking It- Job Profiles - Electrician)