Commission on Professional Practical Experience – Report and Next Steps

The Commission was appointed in 2024 to investigate the challenges faced by architecture students in seeking suitable work experience. The Commission formed part of ARB’s efforts to reform how architects are trained and educated, in order to modernise the competencies required of architects to face emerging and future challenges. Its terms of reference included reviewing the effectiveness of existing mechanisms, identifying best practice and investigating collaboration between academia and the profession. It was tasked with making recommendations to ARB and the wider sector that would improve access to good quality practical experience.

The Commission was chaired by Professor Sir Chris Husbands, an educationist and university leader with decades of experience in the education sector. Chris was joined by Commissioners representing the views of architectural employment, education, and policymaking.

The Commission has now completed its work and published its final report alongside recommendations to ARB and the wider sector to improve the quality of professional practical experience.

Following extensive engagement with trainees, learning providers and practices across the UK, the Commission has concluded that too much responsibility and risk lies with trainees and that this undermines the quality of their work experience. The Commission makes three headline recommendations, calling on the regulator, learning providers, and architectural employers to take meaningful action.

ARB welcomes the Commission’s report and intend to implement their three headline recommendations, but decisions as to whether and how the individual detailed actions under each recommendation is implemented have not yet been made.

We expect to announce next steps this summer.

Download the Commission report

The Commission’s engagement

The Commission undertook a series of visits, online sessions and detailed policy discussions with a range of stakeholders as part of their evidence gathering.

They also launched a call for evidence to find out more about what worked well and the parts of practical training that needed improvement. You can read the full consultation report here, including responses from those that agreed to be published.

You can read more about who spoke to the Commission and hosted their visits here.

The Commission’s recommendations

The recommendations are intended as a combined package of changes, with the greatest benefit coming from them building on each other. The Commission’s full recommendations and the evidence it used to make these is available in its report.

The headline recommendations it has made are:

Architect regulation

Learning providers

Architectural employers

Recommendation 1

Architect Regulation

“ARB should remove constraints to flexibility and innovation to lead sustainable change across the profession”

a. ARB should review its Standards for Learning Providers and Accreditation Handbook to remove any requirements that all Academic Outcomes must be met before Practice Outcomes.

b. ARB should ensure arrangements for practical experience enable trainees to undertake a sufficient range, breadth and variety of experience, by making the following linked changes:

b1)	ARB should issue clear advice to trainees on potential routes for acquiring the Competency Outcomes through their practical training, instead of the requirement that trainees complete a minimum of two years’ practical experience.
b2)	ARB should revise the rules which link requirements on supervision to the existing time requirement.
b3)	ARB should remove the current ‘double counting’ rule to ensure that the focus remains on measuring the quality of experience and competence gained, and to enable practical experience to be undertaken in a variety of methods.
	These three changes are linked and need to be implemented together.

c. ARB should retain its advice that trainees should gain significant experience within the UK.

d. ARB should update its current requirements and advice on the recency of acquired practical experience.

d1)	Trainees should be required to use an approved Record of Competency (covered in Recommendation 2c) to record and reflect on their practical experience.
d2)	Trainees should have completed their final accredited qualification no more than two years prior to applying for registration.
d3)	ARB should require trainees whose qualifications and Record of Competence are completed more than two years before their application to be examined by the ARB Competency Standards Group.

e. ARB should encourage learning providers to submit new qualifications for accreditation which address both Academic and Practice Outcomes, and consider whether its current transition timeline needs to be amended.

f. ARB should routinely describe individuals who are in the process of completing their initial education and training as “trainee architects.”

g. ARB should evaluate the impact of these changes alongside its wider reforms to initial education and training.

Recommendation 2

Learning providers

“Learning providers should take a co-ordinating role in facilitating trainees’ acquisition of all the Competency Outcomes”

a. ARB should revise its Standards for Learning Providers and Accreditation Handbook to require that learning providers take a co-ordinating role in facilitating trainees’ acquisition of all the Competency Outcomes.

a1)

The Standards for Learning Providers or Handbook should require all providers to clearly detail and demonstrate how they will use their significant role and involvement with trainees to prepare them to acquire the full Outcomes, as part of a coherent approach, either during their current qualification or as preparation for a future one.

a2)

These updates to the Standards or Handbook should be informed by our evidence base and by working with professional bodies, individual learning providers and their representative groups. Within either the Standards, Handbook or guidance, we recommend specific expectations for providers:

i. Setting out to ARB how they have considered their resources, local architecture sector and availability of employers in deciding what support they can provide to trainees.

ii. A requirement that learning providers have a clearly identified individual or individuals with lead responsibility for co-ordinating the provider’s relationship with employers for the purpose of facilitating their trainee’s placements with them.

iii. A requirement that learning providers should work with practices on training and development where possible, including developing a code of conduct for practices where their trainees work.

iv. A requirement that learning providers provide guidance to trainees about where they can gain practical experience, support for securing employment and how such experience will link to their individual route to registration.

v. A requirement that learning providers provide trainees with individualised information and advice on their future acquisition of the full Competency Outcomes and on meeting any of ARB’s requirements or advice.

ARB should monitor these provisions through its annual monitoring of learning providers.

b. ARB should work with others, including professional bodies, to help consolidate and deepen links between learning providers and employers.

c. ARB should set minimum standards for a new streamlined and standardised Record of Competency (ROC), which must be used by learning providers.

It would be helpful for ARB to approve specific models of this new ROC which meet the defined minimum standards.

The standards should include that any record must:

c1)	Explicitly map closely to the ARB Competency Outcomes.
c2)	Ensure appropriate weight is given to recording both experience and reflection on that experience.
c3)	Ensure that prior learning can be properly acknowledged.
c4)	Provide clarity about who is, and has been, responsible for supervision of the trainee’s progress towards the Outcomes and any other requirements for registration.
c5)	Be digital by design.
c6)	Provide a basis for the verification of authentic achievement of the Outcomes.

The new ROC should also enable flexibility in sharing responsibilities between learning providers and practices.

We recommend that ARB provide guidance on the who is appropriate to supervise practice.

Recommendation 3

Architectural employers

“Significant improvements in workplace culture should be secured to strengthen how competence is gained”

a. ARB must ensure that its new Architects Code or supplementary guidance includes specific requirements on architects to support trainees on their journey to registration.

b. ARB should require all architects to undertake CPD on mentoring.

Professional bodies themselves should also develop their own CPD schemes, and use their communication with members to promote engagement with mentoring and mentor training.

c. ARB should lead sustained work across the profession to address issues of workplace culture.

c1)	Learning providers should proactively share information in their networks regarding pay, contracts and other employment requirements.
c2)	Professional bodies should use their convening role to reinforce that employers and practices must comply with workplace legislation, including wage laws and the Equality Act.
c3)	ARB should enable those working in the profession to raise complaints about unacceptable professional conduct, including in relation to pay, more easily. They should do this through the proposed Code guidance on whistleblowing and raising concerns, as well as through sustained communication with the profession. ARB should also provide clear signposting for how and where to raise concerns through other organisations in circumstances where ARB itself does not have a defined role.
c4)	ARB should work with providers to identify the types of placements being taken by trainees as part of the new framework. It should then ask the Government to make any legislative changes that would be necessary for these trainees to be covered by minimum wage regulations.

d. ARB should work with others to maintain funding for apprenticeship-based routes to registration for trainees.

The Commissioners

Chair: Professor Sir Chris Husbands

As an educationist, academic, public servant and university leader, Professor Sir Chris Husbands has decades of experience in the education sector. Chris recently stepped down from his previous role as Vice-Chancellor for Sheffield Hallam University.

As the Chair, he had oversight on the Commission’s recommendations on how to improve fair and consistent access to quality practical experience and recommend new minimum requirements for PPE.

Architect Academic: Felicity Atekpe

Felicity Atekpe is an Associate Professor and Director of Practice and Design of Practice at The Bartlett School of Architecture (BSA), University College London. Her academic research includes innovative pedagogies, which address the role of education, ethics and alternative routes to qualification and equitable urban landscapes.

She has more than 20 years of experience as an educator and in her current role she provides academic design practice leadership for programmes across the BSA.

Employer of architects: Peter Barker

Peter Barker is an architectural technologist by background and is a partner at Ryder Architecture. With over 40 years’ experience in practice and a focus on learning, research and development, Peter was a founding director of BIM Academy and brings a wealth of experience and interest that includes developing new routes into the sector, including the award winning PlanBEE programme and architecture degree apprenticeships.

Founded in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1953, Ryder Architecture has teams across the UK and internationally.

Lay member: Polly Mackenzie

Polly Mackenzie is Chief Social Purpose Officer at UAL, having previously served as Chief Executive of Demos, which brings citizen voice and lived experience into public policy discussions.

Her previous roles also include founding CEO of the Money & Mental Health Policy Institute and establishing the operations of the Women’s Equality Party. From 2010-2015 she was Director of Policy to the Deputy Prime Minister.

What’s next

Alan Kershaw, ARB Chair, said:

“The Commission’s evidence is extensive in demonstrating that too much responsibility and risk lies with trainees on their route to registration, that this is not fair nor efficient, and that it must change. Its report provides a compelling vision for how to improve the experience of those trainees and the opportunities to create that change. Such a transformation will be fundamental to how future architects achieve the competencies they need to deliver high quality architecture. We are grateful to the Commissioners for the clear path they have set out for us now to consider and progress.”

ARB welcomes the Commission’s report and we intend to implement their three headline recommendations, but decisions as to whether and how we implement the individual detailed actions under each recommendation have not yet been made. We will need to first fully consider the report and reflect on the best way to progress each area. As we do, we will also identify opportunities to integrate the recommendations into any of our existing work.

We expect to announce next steps this summer. 

The Commission’s recommendations focus on reforming how learning providers, employers and others can all collaborate to enable professional practical experience that is higher quality and more consistent. It is clear that some recommendations are directly within ARB’s remit, while others will require more collaboration and action from others. However we decide to progress each recommendation for ARB, we’ll do so while:

Listening to others and hearing insights that will help us implement them more effectively.
Openly consulting on significant changes, particularly when they will involve asking or requiring others to do more.
Being clear about what others can expect from us and, when the time comes, what they will need to do in response to any changes we make.
Reflecting on our overall aims to improve access to the profession—a key pillar of our reforms to initial education and training.

The Commission’s recommendations are a complementary package. For any recommendations aimed at others, we can work with them and find opportunities to align what they do to our own work, while recognising their own independence.