Getting an education

In my last column ('Skilling time', December/January) I reported on the close working between those preparing plans for the two new Sector Skills Councils, Summit Skills and Construction Skills. Previous to this ('United we must stand', May 2002) I wrote of the need for a united voice for specialist contractors on the Strategic Forum for the Construction Industry. These two issues are closely related, so how have we progressed?

The two SSCs-designate received approval to move into the development stage before Christmas and are now working out the details of how the new organisations will function. There is still a lot to do. It will take some months before robust plans have been submitted to the Sector Skills Development Agency for their final approval.

Close co-ordination between the two SSCs will be essential and that is taking place. One field of activity where such parallel working will be particularly appropriate is higher education. This is a topic very close to my heart.

The Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) has generously elected me as an Honorary Fellow and in January I met with their president, Doug Oughton, and other senior members at their headquarters in Balham, south London. As is proper for a professional institution, much of our debate was about higher education.

I have been a visiting professor at the University of Northumbria (UNN) from 1995 to 2000 and at the University of Central England (UCE) since 2001. UNN has long had a highly regarded degree course in building services engineering, however, it has always struggled to keep up the numbers of students. UCE had to wind up its building services engineering degree course some years ago due to lack of demand and other universities have had similar problems.

This problem is not solely related to building services engineering. It spreads throughout other construction disciplines. There has been an alarming fall-off in the take-up of university places across the whole spectrum of the industry, except for architecture. Remarkably, degree courses for architectural education remain heavily subscribed, although many in the profession are very poorly paid and find themselves working alone for very little income. About 50% of architectural graduates never practice but go into other employment.

The need to boost higher education and craft skill training should be a high priority for the two SSCs working closely together

The two new SSCs will have to address this growing crisis, since higher education is a core issue in their terms of reference from the Government. Summit Skills will be heavily involved with building services engineering higher education as that is at the heart of its work.

Construction Skills will be involved with the whole field of construction higher education as the Construction Industry Council (of which CIBSE is an active member) is one of the co-partners in the SSC, with the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) and the Northern Ireland CITB. How the two SSCs work together on this issue remains to be decided.

As chair of the CITB, I have expressed several times that we may need to put more resources into marketing professional higher education courses, just as the CITB has successfully marketed craft skills in construction to school leavers over recent years. The professional institutions do not have sufficient income to run major campaigns on their own, but the collective strengths of the SSCs will be much better placed. The need to boost higher education and craft skill training should be a very high priority for the two SSCs working closely together.