The CIOB and Capita are to co-sponsor Plumstead Manor School in south-east London, an all-girls comprehensive, to participate in the Class of Your Own student programme on the built environment.
Staff at the school are currently engaged in training programmes that will allow them to offer the COYO’s Design, Engineer, Construct! Programme to three different age groups from September 2015.
In addition, the CIOB, CIBSE and the RICS are also to jointly sponsor all training material for DEC. “They’ll be badged RICS and CIOB [and CIBSE], so that the school children know the professional institutes are behind the initiative,” explained CIOB deputy chief executive Bridget Bartlett.
Speaking at the Inspiring the Future conference, COYO director Alison Watson was accompanied by DEC! students from Heathcote School and Science College in Chingford, which was adopted by QS firm Gardiner & Theobald earlier this year.
Staff and students explained how G&T had supported an exercise to plan, cost and design an “underground hotel” using Tube tunnels below Old Street underground.
Watson also explained that the DEC programme, which has award, certificate and diploma programmes for all learners at Key 3 and 4, is gaining momentum.
Currently, the 14-16 DEC Key Stage 4 curriculum is recognised as the equivalent of a GCSE for the purpose of compiling school league tables.
It has launched a new training programme for school teachers, so that they can become specialist teachers in the Built Environment and help train and enthuse other teachers. COYO is currently seeking support from the CITB to extend the programme.
A new DEC qualification for Key Stage 5, or the 16-18 year group, is also now available and approved by Ofqual. COYO is awaiting confirmation that it will also be eligible for the compilation of school league tables as the equivalent of an A-level,
But Watson also revealed that COYO has had to help several schools it had worked with to upgrade their IT hardware so that it could actually run the Autodesk Revit software used by the students.
