ARB on ‘Modernising architectural education and training’

The Architects Registration Board (ARB) is arguing that the way we educate and train architects in the UK needs to change, as ‘we need to ensure architects acquire the right skills, knowledge, experience and behaviours’

… existing educational model of Parts 1, 2 and 3 is inflexible and needs modernising to address key challenges facing the sector…

The ARB writes:

As the professional regulator, ARB is responsible for setting the standards for registration as an architect. We currently fulfil this role by setting Criteria and processes that institutions teaching architecture must meet in order for their students to qualify and register as architects.

However, ARB’s evidence suggests that the existing educational model of Parts 1, 2 and 3 is inflexible and needs modernising to address key challenges facing the sector. The current system has produced thousands of excellent architects, but it’s also created significant barriers to some people becoming architects at all.

We have a vision of how we might modernise education and training, by developing a regulatory model that focusses on the outcomes required of an individual at the end of their initial period of education and training.

We believe that the most important factor is what a newly qualified architect should be able to do – not how they got there. This means that we are open to considering different routes to registration, particularly those which might widen access to the profession.

Vision for success: what we want to achieve
We want to work with the sector and modernise initial education and training in a way which will achieve our vision:

  1. PUBLIC: Ensure that anyone joining the Register is equipped to design a built environment that reflects the needs of society so that people can be safe and live well, and helps to tackle the fundamental challenges our planet faces
  2. PROFESSION AND EMPLOYERS: Provide future architects with skills, knowledge, experience and behaviours that they can develop and apply throughout their career
  3. INSTITUTIONS: Allow for flexibility and innovation by bodies that provide education and training, ensuring the UK remains an attractive place to study
  4. FUTURE ARCHITECTS: Enable anyone with the right competencies to become an architect by a route that is right for them
  5. REGULATORY: Through an effective and proportionate quality assurance model, give clarity about the accountability of ARB, the institutions, and students

The evidence which has helped shaped our thinking, and our plans for the new regulatory approach, are explained in more detail in an informative discussion paper…..

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