The power of perseverance: turning disappointing A-levels into apprenticeship success
Posted on: 17 February, 2025
Like many young people, Querida Matondo heard about apprenticeships not through school, but by knowing someone who’d been through the experience: in this case, her sister.
Name: Querida Matondo
Company: Hollis
Like many young people, Querida Matondo heard about apprenticeships not through school, but by knowing someone who’d been through the experience: in this case, her sister.
Even though her school was keen to push the UCAS route, Querida didn’t feel a traditional university would suit her:
“I didn’t want to do full-time learning. I felt like I wanted to do some learning on the job, but I also wanted the degree.”
Querida started researching apprenticeships after her sister embarked on a lower-level apprenticeship programme. It wasn’t long before Querida realised a degree apprenticeship would enable her to work, earn money and learn all at the same time. She quickly seized the initiative – despite a lack of interest or support from her school – and secured interviews independently.
By the end of sixth form, Querida held conditional degree apprenticeship offers in both construction management and architecture, reflecting her interests in Maths and Art.
Unfortunately, a setback was around the corner, when she didn’t gain the A-level results she needed to take up either offer:
“I was really upset and I didn’t know what to do. I definitely knew that I didn’t want to retake my A-levels so I started looking into options that would get me to where I wanted to be.”
Querida’s path to her apprenticeship
Querida had always been fascinated with the “intricacies” of buildings: “It takes some physics, there’s a bit of art to it, and engineering. There’s so much to it that you can’t even fathom sometimes.”
After coming to terms with not meeting the conditions of her two apprenticeship offers, Querida picked herself up and started investigating alternative ways to qualify for a degree apprenticeship in the built environment.
She started looking for full-time Level Three courses in construction so that she could either do a degree without a foundation year or proceed to a degree apprenticeship without retaking A-Levels.
This was a struggle, however: “Loads of them were up north, which is really far away from where I live, but I eventually found one at London Southbank Technical College”.
Querida worked diligently to complete her Level Three, but hit another roadblock when “the offers [for degree apprenticeships] didn’t come flooding in.”
Two different people sent Querida details of another Level Three apprenticeship in health and safety at Hollis. Even though this wasn’t the quantity surveying degree apprenticeship that Querida was looking for, she took it as a sign and applied anyway, thinking perhaps it might be possible to work her way up.
Halfway through the interview, the interviewer stopped and told Querida it was clear health and safety was not her true passion. Querida acknowledged this, and they spoke about how quantity surveying was her real interest. The interviewer guided Querida towards an opportunity for work experience within the quantity surveying team at Hollis. The team had no roles open at that time, but during Querida’s placement, they opened an opportunity for her to enrol on the degree apprenticeship at UCEM … and the rest is history.
“It just goes to show you what a nice company I work for”, says Querida. “For her to just recognise [quantity surveying] was what I really wanted to do. I really thank her for giving me that opportunity.”
The links between learning and working
Querida is enjoying the breadth of the curriculum at UCEM: “We learn about contract law, we learn about people and management, we learn about construction technology, which you’d expect, but also digital technology. It all links very well and it’s a nice eye opener of what contributes to the built environment as an industry.”
She finds that the learning is very closely mapped to the practicalities of her role, with plenty of opportunities to apply it:
“I had to make a cost plan for a facade remediation, and there were missing cavity barriers. When I looked at the drawings, I knew what the cavity barriers looked like because I studied it in construction tech.”
Querida was actually entrusted with a solo site visit to remedy a snag: a rarity for a first-year apprentice:
“I was quite proud of myself because I never imagined I would go on-site with the client and contractor alone in my first year. It was just a simple snag, but I had to interact with the client and make sure they were happy with the work that was completed. I was their first point of contact, and it struck a lot of independence in me. It was fun, scary, and interesting, and I’m proud I was able to do it.”
Focusing on the future
Querida aims to become a Chartered Surveyor, and intends to take the APC once she completes her degree apprenticeship.
She is passionate about increasing awareness of apprenticeships, both in the built environment and generally:
“I want to speak to students in schools, and raise awareness about what an apprenticeship is like. They need to know about the different jobs in construction as well because there’s a perception that construction is just bricks and manual labour.”
Querida believes that social media – especially platforms like TikTok – could be an effective tool for promoting apprenticeships to younger audiences:
“I think people are straying away from the traditional reading of books. People want things that are graphic and visual. It needs to be relatable, and I think they can relate to something that’s on social media more than just being spoken to.”
