LSTA Prepares to Welcome French Students

The Lead Sheet Training Academy (LSTA) is getting ready to welcome eight French roofing students visiting the Kent training centre at the end of the month.

The French visitors are roofing students at BTP CFA Pays de la Loire, a specialist construction training college in the Loire region of France. Another group of 24 students from the institution will be visiting the LSTA in September.

The visitors are from a total cohort of 450 young people currently training in roofing at the French college, where they attend for five years until they qualify. Unlike in the UK, each French student studies all the roofing disciplines, qualifying in both pitched, flat and hard metals roofing.

However, leadwork training is one area where there is little opportunity in the French system, so Florence Petit-Mabilleau, Head of International Relations organised the visit to the UK’s Lead Sheet Training Academy.

John Lewis, Director of Training and Operations at LSTA, said: “It’s fantastic to work with our European colleagues and collaborate on extending the curriculum for roofing students, providing valuable experience of different roofing skills, materials and detailing.”

Welcoming French Students

At the LSTA, the French students will spend the first of their two-weeks’ visit learning basic lead welding and bossing skills and will receive a City & Guilds Accreditation in basic traditional leadwork craft.

In week two, students will focus on the types of detailing they might expect to come across in France, including cornices, parapet walls, wood rolls and roll ends for flat roofing as well as tapered or box gutter.

John adds: “Lead training isn’t such a well-developed area of roofing in France as it is in the UK, so we will be looking at lead casting, decorative leadwork techniques and other areas of lead working practised in the UK to broaden their experience. Alongside this, the students will be visiting historic buildings at the weekend where they can see lead roofing installed. We are taking a deliberately fluid approach in the second week so there is time to follow any students’ interests inspired by their visit.”

Based on the ERASMUS student exchange concept (that John is hoping will be reintroduced formally in 2028), the students will be accompanied by two French tutors but are expected to be reasonably self-sufficient during their stay, when they will be accommodated at a nearby youth hostel and doing their own cooking and washing.

It is hoped that a reciprocal visit to France can be organised from the UK in the near future.

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