Update on CYM HE courses and announcing our CYM Futures Project

We announced in July 2024 that CYM were suspending all new recruitment to Higher Education (HE) courses delivered by CYM in partnership with Birmingham Newman University. This decision was taken in response to a persistent fall in applications for Higher Education courses that is a pattern (as investigated in this August 2024 Church Times article) being reflected across children, youth and mission related courses in the sector.

We are grateful to the many sector colleagues, alumni and supporters that reached out to us when we announced this decision. Your support, prayers and counsel have been welcomed.

We can now confirm that CYM will not be resuming recruitment to HE programmes and that we have moved into teach-out of our current courses with our continuing students. These students will be continuing studies this month as planned and CYM are fully committed to enabling them to complete their qualifications over the next two years.

The trustees and staff of CYM have been working through the summer to adjust our operating structure in order to continue supporting current students and to progress our wider projects in support of ministry with children and young people. This has required a staffing restructure and, sadly, we have had to say goodbye to some of our valued team as we refocus resources on teach-out and current projects. We would like to express our thanks to the staff team in working with us in this process and we pray for God’s blessing on those that have moved on to new adventures during a summer of transition.

CYM remain committed to research, training, and resourcing the church in ministry and mission with children and young people. We know from our ‘Taking the Pulse’ research project that the needs, demands and aspirations for ministry and mission with children and young people must change to address the contemporary world in which we live. We are therefore commencing a season of listening and testing new approaches for training and resourcing the church in ministry and mission with children and young people in the UK. We have called this the CYM Futures Project. This will build on outcomes from current research programmes and provide wider access to online resources such as ‘Your Faith: Your Online World’ and ‘Trauma Sensitive Approaches’ to children’s, youth and family ministry.

You can sign up to our newsletter here to find out about opportunities for dialogue as we progress with the CYM Futures Project throughout 2024-25. We welcome your engagement as we look to the future and invite you to contact us with any enquiries via: hello@cym.ac.uk.