An Engine for Change - A Chronicle of the Engineering Council

1985-1988: THE TOMBS YEARS 45Interfacing with Further and Higher EducationSARTORCodes of Practice relating to SARTOR, by now the generally accepted acronym for thePolicy Statement ‘Standards and Routes to Registration’ originally published in December1984 [see Chapter 2], were produced by the Board for Engineers’ Registration in 1986. Theseset out procedures for nominating individuals to the Register and accrediting courses,programmes and arrangements for education, training and experience. SARTOR specifiedthree stages that had to be attained before individuals could register as CEng, TEng orEngTech. These were:Stage 1 - An appropriate academic qualification: the exemplifying standards werespecified as an accredited degree for CEng, HNC for TEng, or ONC for EngTech.Stage 2 - Appropriate training: usually of not less than two years’ duration.Stage 3 - Relevant experience, including some of a responsible nature: usually notless than two years’ duration.[Stage 4 - A Professional Review was a later addition.]Thus for aspiring Chartered Engineers, for example, the total minimum time would be sevenyears comprising, for Stage 1, a three-year accredited degree plus, for Stages 2 and 3, fouryears of training and experience. SARTOR set out the general standards and requirements forall three stages. It was then the responsibility of the Nominated and Authorised Bodies – i.e.the Professional Engineering Institutions - to provide and apply details for their own branchesof engineering. A recurring theme in the 1980 Finniston Report found an echo in theSARTOR statement that design should form a thread running through all three Stages andthat the “Engineering Application” components EA1 and EA2 advocated by Finniston shouldbe integrated into academic courses.The basic philosophy behind SARTOR was that it provided a minimum (though high)standard which all registrants had to meet. However it was open to any Nominated Body toimpose its own additional membership requirements. For example, the Institution ofStructural Engineers required all CEng candidates to sit a practical design examination.SARTOR was constructed on the principle of “ladders and bridges” enabling those starting ata low level, say on an Ordinary National Certificate course aiming at EngineeringTechnician, to transfer, if successful, to higher courses of education and training leading toTEng or CEng, sometimes being excused the first year of these more advanced courses. Thisprinciple of “ladders and bridges” had been urged in a letter of 21 January 1983 to the EngCfrom the Department of Education and Science (DES), using Lord Hailsham’s words of sometwenty years previously when the CEI was being established [see Chapter 1]. This practicewas in distinction to that of other professions where, for example, it was not generallypossible for someone studying nursing to become a doctor without starting again. The“ladders and bridges” diagram associated with SARTOR is reproduced in Fig.5. At the sametime the DES letter cast doubt, in the light of the development of some four-year MEngdegree courses, on the need for all accredited engineering degree courses to be longer thanthree years. It did, however, leave the door open for further discussion on an extension to fouryears. This general extension was not to take place until 14 years later [see the SARTOR-3story in Chapter 6].© Engineering Council UK 2004