What influences British Columbia apprenticeship students to accelerate their technical training schedules?

British Columbia's apprenticeship system policies allow apprentices to accelerate their technical training, enabling them to write their Red Seal qualification exam well before becoming eligible for certification. The reasons why apprentices choose to do this remain unclear. I have consistently observed apprentices who accelerate their technical training be unsuccessful when writing their certification exam. Although research exists on the wide variety of factors affecting the completion rates of apprentices, none specifically examines those who accelerate their timelines and how they perform on their Red Seal exam. This lack of research may be due to British Columbia's policies, which permit highly accelerated training timelines compared to other provinces where regulations limit how much an apprentice can accelerate their timeline. In order to better understand this phenomenon, I convened a focus group of seven apprentices near the end of their final level of classroom-based education to learn what influenced their timing when enrolling for their technical training sessions and why they would accelerate their training schedule. Within the focus group I found that course availability, student housing and money were the primary influences. These influences led two of the focus group participants to accelerate their training timelines and take their certification exam before they were eligible for certification.