The abolition of apprenticeships is a tragedy for the architectural profession says the Association of Consultant Architects.

 

The department for education has announced the abolition of level 7 apprenticeships for students over 21 years of age. It is a tragedy for ambitious and talented people in training and for architectural practices and for universities.

The apprenticeship scheme was seen as a way of fundamentally changing the relationship between architectural practice and academia. University tutors got to know Architects in practice, and mentors and directors were welcomed into universities.

Conventional professional training in architecture is a very slow and time-consuming business and it’s expensive.

Students currently need five years of loans to enter a job paying perhaps only £32,000 pa. Even after current reforms it won’t go below four years. The Farrell review was right when in 2014 it predicted that this situation was unsustainable and that was before the recent dramatic rise in living costs.

Professor Timothy Brittain-Catlin who is course leader for the Cambridge Masters in Architecture degree apprenticeship says:

“Making a big impact on widening entry into the profession was always going to take time. We wanted to draw into our courses not only young recent graduates, but also those experienced people, wherever they are and at whatever stage in life, who had for one reason or another never managed to become qualified as architects; the great thing about the apprenticeship idea was that we were creating a melting pot of talented people of all ages in backgrounds.

“We are told that there is to be a major government programme of construction and new infrastructure – now the government has pulled the plug on a qualification route which would have helped prepare the profession for exactly the moment when these promised projects should come on stream.

“The way the Department for Education has handled this has been hopeless. The decisions have clearly been made by people who have no real understanding of how architectural training and practice work. Apprentices are tax-paying, productive members of their practices but now they will be sent back to University full-time and will have to take out student and maintenance loans, while offices will have to seek short-term replacement and train them from scratch. And apprenticeship courses will be closed down before universities can come up with alternatives.

“Ironically, it is clear from the Architects Registration Board’s recent professional practice commission report that the regulator envisages a future very similar to the models that we have been developing for apprenticeships. The profession and it’s representative should push back against this backward step.”

Patrick Inglis, President of the Association of Consultant Architects, the national professional body representing architects in private practice, points out that it has taken several years for practices to engage in and support a successful apprenticeship route to qualification, supporting students with a mix of work and study.

“This has opened the profession to a more diverse set of talents and should be enthusiastically encouraged by government supporting this enlightened change, rather than sabotaging it by abolishing level 7 apprenticeships for over 21 year olds – level 7 is equivalent of a masters degree so no one under the age of 21 would be eligible, and if entrants at lower levels to architectural apprenticeships know that they cannot complete the course and get their qualification, they are not going to start are they, he points out”.

There are currently hundreds of Part 2 apprentices in the country of which Cambridge alone has about 70. Part 1 Apprentices will not now be able to continue to complete their studies this way.

The ACA believes that government should urgently review and reverse this unfortunate decision which seems to be based on a lack of understanding and to clarify the position as quickly as possible.

CONTACTS:

ACA

President Patrick Inglis: patrick@ibla.co.uk

Press Officer Brian Waters: brianwaters1@mac.com

CAMBRIDGE       

Professor Brittain-Catlin: tjb43@cam.ac.uk