The RIBA Education Review (RER) has now been underway since 2013. When I last commented on it nearly three years ago, the Brexit referendum had only just taken place and Barack Obama was still in the White House. A huge amount has changed in the world since then, and yet it seems that progress in education reform has been painfully slow. To try to understand what has been going on I reached out to the RIBA’s dogged director of education, David Gloster, who has been patiently overseeing the process.

When I first contacted Gloster back in 2016, the RER was still finalising its principal recommendations, which were eventually shared at the RIBA Education Forum in March 2017. The central proposal was the introduction of a “seven-year integrated award” that would enable “access to the register of architects and title of architect on successful completion of the integrated course”. Although the existing system had always allowed for registration within seven years, few ever achieved this, with most architects taking closer to 10 (or never registering). A clear and properly structured route to becoming an architect in a set seven-year period of time therefore clearly had the potential to make a lot of difference to students’ lives and career paths. But six years on from the initiation of the RER, where are all the new courses?

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