Its not quite as daft as it sounds.

It could be like what Cathay do with their "Cadets". They make them serve as "Second Officers" who are assigned in addition to the regular rostered crew (e.g. so 3+1). They then spend about a year observing and taking part of the cruise stage.

After a year they move onto becoming junior first officers and take part in full aircraft operating duties and become part of the rostered crew.

A big downer is that during their career as Second Officers, they accrue absolutely Zero hours on their logs as they do not do any landings or takeoffs.

In relation to pay, i believe it is regular first officer starting pay but as you pay BA £84K as a bond to start with, they pay that back in installments over 7 years on top of your regular wage. If you decide to up sticks before the 7 years for a tax free salary and big jet in Dubai, you would probably forfeit the outstanding amount from the bond due back.

It would be a real bummer if you had to pay BA the bond and then to top it off, they pay you less. Im sure BA pilots union would fight against such a plan.

Now if it was BA paying for your training completely and no bond having to be deposited then BA could be justified in paying the graduates a reduced pay for X amount of years in order to recoup training costs.