School buildings: Could achieve great things

Are there grounds for optimism yet, for the design and construction industry working in the education sector? It’s hard to feel it, but inevitably changes to spending cuts in the school estate, with all its challenges, also bring new opportunities, ideas and ways of doing things.

We have to make strong arguments as we compete with all the other sectors when it comes to investment for school buildings. While our sector faces the harshest of the current cuts, there are still opportunities. The Priority School Buildings Programme (PSBP), although inevitably over-subscribed, will mean that we should see newly built schools opening in 2014.
And we do need new schools. Creating the right learning environments for young people through new building and refurbishment projects will not only create jobs, it will
make a difference to the day-to-day experiences of teachers and children, as well as catering for the forthcoming growth in the school population. Decent school buildings with the right equipment and facilities are a powerful tool for teaching and learning, impacting the attainment of young people.

It’s not rocket science.

As an ex-science teacher in a challenging inner London secondary school, I had first-hand experience of the impact of buildings on my students and my colleagues. Children too scared to use the toilets or go into the playground; corridors that were difficult for children to move around, encouraging the wrong sort of behaviour.

I have also worked on the development of “studio schools” (a new model of school with a curriculum that reflects the workplace). Some designs make it difficult for teachers to work together or act as a barrier against group work and project-based learning.

The ever-growing requirements of technology need to be catered for in our schools or our children won’t get the massive benefits that it offers, nor the preparation they need to be ready for our increasingly technology-dominated world.

We must be intelligent about how school capital funding is spent and work smarter, in a way that doesn’t exhaust limited resources. To make the necessary savings, innovation and creativity need to be core principles rather than fashionable buzzwords (along with that other stalwart, partnership). There’s so much that we can learn from each other, across sectors and regions. This is one of the reasons we’re developing a series of regional bases, as well as launching a new network for staff in local authorities. These initiatives will help share the learning of what works and what doesn’t, both locally and nationally.

Standardised design is the order of the day; we need to make sure the designs go through a robust system of scrutiny and testing, and focus on best practice rather than a “make do” approach. However, the PSBP is not a panacea, and we need to be realistic about what’s on offer. The application process has been a challenge and the numbers of new schools are nowhere near what we need. There’s concern about the quality of standardised design, and we’re unlikely to have consensus on a design approach that works for everyone.

PFI-funded public buildings have had their fair share of poor outcomes. Coupled with a pressured timetable, limited local authority resources and shrinking expertise, there’s a danger we will end up with long term problems because we need short term solutions. So we mustn’t forget other approaches for the future. Refurbishment programmes and the creative re-use of other buildings as learning environments are also routes to having decent schools.

In the meantime, this isn’t a rehearsal. There is a wealth of experience and knowledge out there waiting to be harnessed, and a real willingness by the industry to do the very best with what there is in the form of the PSBP. This is an opportunity to show what we, the design and construction industry, can do.

Nusrat Faizullah is the new chief executive of the British Council for School Environments