Our work in Education and Validation

Education lies at the heart of the CAA’s mission to advance architecture across the Commonwealth. While Validating Schools of Architecture remains an important aspect of our work, the CAA has since broadened its scope to include:

• Continuing Professional Development: Developing and delivering an ongoing programme of Continuing Professional Development aimed at policymakers, practitioners, teaching faculty and students.
• Building a coalition of Schools of Architecture: Building a coalition of schools of architecture across the Commonwealth together with a database of faculties.
• Helping to train teaching faculty: Working with the International Finance Corporation to help promote its ‘Designing for Greater Efficiency’ programme among teaching faculty in Sub-Saharan Africa.
• Developing scalable and replicable training programmes: Working with members of the Commonwealth Sustainable Cities Initiative to develop a memorandum of understanding with the UN Habitat Capacity Building and Training Unit to develop scalable programmes to help build the capacity of urban stakeholders throughout the Commonwealth and beyond.

The CAA is working in collaboration with a range of Commonwealth partners to promote core competencies as a pathway to validation and as a means of increasing mobility, while helping to increase climate literacy among academia, practitioners and policymakers. Follow the links above for further information.

The members of the Education Steering Committee for the term 2024-2026 include:

• Mr Umar Saeed, Chair (Pakistan)
• Mr William Nii Teiko Evans-Anform (Ghana)
• Mr Rohana Herath (Sri Lanka)
• Dr David Fortin (Canada)
• Ms Heba Elsharkawy (United Kingdom)
• Ms Shari Blanch (Australia)
• Ms Charmaine ‘Ilaiu Talie (New Zealand)

The CAA Education Steering Committee comprises a Chairperson together with up to five suitably experienced individuals drawn from the five regions of the Commonwealth. It reports to CAA Council and is supported by the CAA Executive Director. The role of the committee is as follows:

Generally

Together with members of the CAA Professional Practice Committee:

• Liaise with the CAA Executive Director to agree a programme of bi-monthly meetings to align with the CAA Council Meeting schedule
• Develop a coordinated programme of activity to align with the CAA Strategy for the period 2024-2030 as outlined below, e.g. benchmarking studies, surveys, policy papers, model guidelines, CPD events, good practice studies, etc.
• Co-opt Subject Matter Experts as required to deliver the agreed programme of activity.
• Provide bi-monthly updates to CAA Council and to the Editorial Board together with associated material for publication.

Specifically

Focused primarily on the 3 key audiences and 3 key focus areas identified in the 2024-2030 CAA Strategy, i.e. Academia (Heads of School, Teaching Faculty and Students) Practitioners (Member Organisations and Practitioners and Policymakers (Central and Local Government).

Advocacy

Together with members of the CAA Professional Practice Committee, support leaders to make better evidence based decisions on built environment issues, including:

• Help to strengthen links between academia, practitioners, policymakers, and partner organisations for greater impact.
• Build an evidence base to help identify barriers and enablers to sustainable urbanisation.

Capacity Building

Address the capacity gaps in rapidly urbanising, low income countries that are vulnerable to climate change impacts, including:

• Promote core competencies as a pathway to validation and validation as a means of raising standards and increasing mobility.
• Build a mutually supportive coalition of architectural faculties across the Commonwealth.

Climate Action

Together with members of the CAA Professional Practice Committee, accelerate the transition towards a more sustainable and equitable world, including:

• Help to increase climate literacy among academia, practitioners, and policymakers.
• Collaborate with partners across sectors and disciplines to develop transformational scalable and replicable approaches to help address the capacity gaps, especially in secondary cities and in the public sector.

The following map in based on data compiled by the CAA and lists all known Schools of Architecture in the Commonwealth. Click on the icons in the map for further information.