If there are thousands of members on here and a lot of them has come from short courses i would say that hundreds would be the right number, not just a few, The nature of this topic has been argued many times before and im sure will be many times again, nobody is saying that you will be a master tiler in two weeks but a good course will certainly teach you how to set out, fix tiles correctly, cut and shape, cover all background preparation, and adhesive selection, from there its down to how good you are naturally to pick the skills up, The comment on saying that i would not dare to tile a splash back after a year an a half is rediculous, you have had the wrong training if this is the case, we all make mistakes along the way but you learn from these and this can only be done out in the real world by yourself, how far wrong can you go with a splashback anyway, its one of the most easiest jobs to do in tiling, most people do their own tiling splashback with no tiling training or knowledge and still end up with a good job.
I have run the tiling program now for over 7 years and some people will never make a tiler as they are just not cut out for practical skills, but most can pick it up with enough skills to leave, take on some straight forward jobs, do a good job and build from there.
I agree that it is not an easy business to be in down to the fact that it isnt just tiling skills that you need, there is the marketing, sales and drive also needed to be successfull, you could be a great tiler but without these other elements you will fail.
Everyone has their own opinions mostly based on assuption, mine is based on fact as we have had the people in and trainined them, know what training knowledge they have received and tracked their progress. Granted there is a lot of people fail but there is also a lot of people that succeed and sustain a business. I would have thought the same numbers would apply to people that attended 1 day a week in a college at a snails pace, most of them drop out after about 6 weeks.
