Don't want to digress too much but.....regarding Geoff comments about the Apprentice route and 'doubting that such an approach would sit well within the organisation of the NHS'. Well that is not our experience of the situation.
In my time here we have had two EBME apprentices taken on and were both successful in their training. The both did an HNC in tandem with their work based training - seemed to work for us. Only thing I didn't take a fancy to was the amount of paperwork they had to do for their NVQ.
Check things out with the local college, ours were very good. As far as I understand it, under A4C they could still go that route (i.e. an apprenticeship) under payband4 whilst in training.
