The Chartered Surveyors Training Trust was created by the Worshipful Company of Chartered Surveyors in 1982 in an attempt to tackle youth unemployment. Two years later, the group gained approval as a training organisation for surveyors.
During that first year, just 87 people passed through the scheme. This year it has more than 200 apprentices on its books. And now, as part of the government’s Apprenticeship Trailblazers scheme, the CSTT has lofty ambitions to get even more young people into surveying through apprenticeships.
Chairman Richard Carter, himself an apprentice through the CSTT, says applications now exceed 2,000 a year and
that a rising number of young people are looking at apprenticeships instead of university.
Chief executive Katherine Parker adds: “We have supported around 230 trainees during the year on surveying apprenticeships and as progressing managed students. We have been very successful in recruiting young people with a real passion for surveying and who have faced a barrier to starting their surveying career.
“The traditional way to become a surveyor was to take a surveying degree and then gain work experience, but owing to increases in tuition fees, many young people are applying to us as an alternative.”
While surveying apprenticeships used to offer those on the scheme an education up to an A-level equivalent, the launch in March last year of a degree-equivalent apprenticeship is expected to attract even greater numbers of young people from different backgrounds.
Prime minister David Cameron says the degree-level apprenticeships will “bring the world of business and the world of education closer together, and let us build the high-level technical skills needed for the jobs of the future”. Carter agrees and hopes the introduction will offer an even more compelling reason for companies to take on apprentices. He says the level-six apprenticeship means aspiring chartered surveyors can now leave school, get employed, receive a degree and get qualified with the additional advantage of having no university debt.
The average debt for a university leaver in 2014 was more than £40,000.
The level-six programme is being provided virtually by the College of Estate Management and the CSTT will begin recruiting for its first cohort in the spring.
“We have had the market to ourselves for 30 years and have helped more than 2,000 young people to become chartered surveyors, says Carter. Apprenticeships are the way forward and the CSTT is the best place to start,” Carter says.
And, by the looks of things, a good place to finish. While only one in four people who start a vocational chartered surveying degree end up working as a chartered surveyor, through the apprenticeship scheme it is closer to three out of four.
And for Hannah Bunting, a surveyor at Northamptonshire-based Chown Commercial, who studied through the CSTT, the reason is clear (see below). She says being able to work while learning is invaluable, while the self-monitoring and distance-learning nature of the scheme shows employees that an apprentice is committed, driven and able to manage their own time.
“The years of experience you have behind you when you qualify lets you go into a job and apply your knowledge straight away. Experience wins every time,” she says.
With a 30-year track record and a new lease of life from the trailblazers scheme, the CSTT is well placed for success in the future. It already has close links with many of the major agents but with a
degree-equivalent apprenticeship now sitting alongside the A-level equivalent, and renewed vigour from the industry to diversify its workforce and encourage a new generation, it is confident that its opportunity to place thousands of young people in the world of property will continue to grow.
To find out more, visit www.cstt.org.uk or e-mail louiseh@cstt.org.uk
Hannah’s story
My love of buildings began at a young age. I knew I always wanted to work in the property sector, I was just never quite sure how.
I discovered the CSTT when I was researching the profession online. I have now been involved with it, as an apprentice and managed student, for four years.
I applied in 2011 and gained a place to begin in September 2012, but my need for alternative provisions support actually began in July 2007 when I was involved in a road traffic accident and damaged my spine and right shoulder.
Due to the difficulties I faced, I missed a lot of my schooling which affected the amount of GCSEs and A-levels I was able to achieve. Without the CSTT I would not have been able to access higher education, and I would not have been able to get on to any surveying course at university.
I gained my associate RICS surveying qualifications – and an Apprentice of the Year award from the CSTT – in 2014 and am now training to undertake my MRICS exams.
Throughout my apprenticeship and as a managed student I have been working at Chown Commercial, where I am the retained agent for two major Starbucks franchisee partners and am sourcing shops and drive-throughs for them nationwide.
These achievements were down to the support and encouragement offered by the CSTT. Its people believed that despite the challenges of my disability I could achieve. They offered me continued support and an opportunity I would never have had. I cannot thank them enough.
