South African Council for the Architectural Profession (SACAP) launches learning programme
The South African Council for the Architectural Profession (SACAP) is about to launch an online platform that will initiate its Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) programme, a key change driver of the fourth term council’s plan that aspires to realize economic redress within the profession and the broader built environment.
Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) is an alternate and valid route to professional qualification for these practitioners without them having to give up their full-time employment. As the RPL programme would in general take between six months and two years to award a professional qualification, transformation will be attained in much quicker time than the pipeline approach of formal studies.
The architectural profession has been beset by a lack of representivity even though it is some 23 years into democracy. The common focus of public institutions, including universities, has been on recruiting more students from the traditionally disadvantaged communities – a pipeline approach. Given the historic inequality in schooling, related to socio-economic challenges faced by these students, curriculum and resources have not sufficiently tailored to this reality.
It takes a minimum of six years to graduate as candidate architect while a genuine concern of the socio-economic realities of a changed student body has not been impending; this has really muffled transformation.
As the architectural professionals’ regulatory body, SACAP’s strategic plan and objectives are lined up with the essentials of the National Development Plan (NDP) and the roll-out of its cutting edge large scale infrastructure projects.
The programme has been designed as a two-phase process. The first stage takes place online and allows for self-assessment. The outcome of this assessment decides whether the user can progress to the second phase, which comprises the applicant being invited to present their work evidenced in the self-assessment phase, for review by an assessment panel.
SACAP is proud to start RPL to advance human potentialities in the interest of redress, transformation and nation building.
