West Midlands Police and Staffordshire University have welcomed the largest cohort of student officers to the Degree Holder Entry Programme.
The roadmap to our largest DHEP cohort and year two of the PCDA.
The Degree Holder Entry Programme (DHEP) is a two-year fully funded graduate diploma programme, allowing student officers to earn while they learn. Our 96 new student officers range in age from 21 to 50 and have previously achieved a variety of undergraduate degrees and master’s degrees from universities around the country.
Student officers will do a blend of work-based training and academic learning, delivered by police trainers and our lecturers. Their induction, facilitated by the University through Microsoft Teams, took the students through the basics including uniforms and pocket notebooks with a West Midlands Police trainer. This week, the group begin studying Introduction to Understanding Policing with Lecturer Barrie Sheldon.
Our record-breaking number of new student officers coincided with the start of the second year for some Student Officers on the three yearlong Police Constable Degree Apprenticeship (PCDA) programme.
Director for the Institute of Policing, Nick Howe, said: “We’re delighted to see officers of the future learning with our expert team across both programmes. Those entering year two of the PCDA have shown great promise.
“I look forward to seeing the career development opportunities that our partnership programmes create for each of our student officers in the future.”
There are currently 886 student officers studying with our Institute of Policing, with almost 500 more set to join us before the end of the year.
Staffordshire University is partnered with four of our regional forces: Staffordshire, Warwickshire, West Mercia, and West Midlands. All student officers go through rigorous assessments with their chosen police force before being accepted onto our programmes.
We are recruiting across our policing courses and you can find out more here.