Apprenticeships offered no guarantee of educational quality or professional standards, and the system was believed to be "rife with vested interests and open to abuse, dishonesty and incompetence".

[7] Two articled pupils, Robert Kerr (1823–1904) and Charles Gray (1827/28–1881), proposed a systematic course of training provided by the students themselves.

[12] Ruth Gollancz,[13] Winifred Ryle, Irene Graves and Gillian Harrison (nee Cooke) were some of the first women to enter the AA,[14] hitherto a solely male school.

[14] In the post World War II period, several women architects, writers, and journalists attended courses ("classes and sets") at the AA, including Su Brumwell (Susan Miller / Rogers), Eldred Evans, Margot Griffin, Zaha Hadid, Patti Hopkins, Samantha Hardingham, Sally Mackereth, Mya Anastasia Manakides, Janet Street-Porter, Carolyn Trevor, Susan Wheeler and Georgie Walton.

[15] Courses are divided into two main areas: undergraduate programmes, leading to the AA Diploma (RIBA/ARB Part 2), and postgraduate programmes, which include specialised courses in Landscape Urbanism,[16] Housing and Urbanism, Sustainable Environmental Design, Histories and Theories, Emergent Technologies,[17] and Design Research Lab.

Teaching staff are reappointed annually, allowing a continual renewal of the exploration of architectural graphics and polemical formalism.

"[31] Her dismissal came despite support from academics who wrote an open letter talking of "systemic biases" against women and of sexism, and accusing the AA of using "the pandemic for anti-democratic purposes".