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School Works, 2nd Floor Downstream Building, 1 London Bridge, London, SE1 9BG
Barry Sheerman MP Education and Skills Committee 7 Millbank SW1P 3JA
15 June 2006
Dear Barry Sheerman MP School Works welcomes the select committee's inquiry into Sustainable School Design.
In January we sent the select committee a letter outlining some of the learning we have developed over the last 5 years. We would like to reiterate the points we made in our previous letter and highlight a number of other issues that we feel are important.
Since 1999 School Works has been at the cutting edge of developing effective stakeholder involvement in the design of school buildings. Our work has included:
· Our pilot project at Kingsdale School in Southwark
· DfES funded demonstration sites in Building Schools For the Future LEAs including; pathfinder LEA Bradford, Sunderland LEA and Northampton LEA,
· Working on bids with two consortia in the early Bradford BSF pathfinder, including the winning bidder Integrated Bradford. This will involve continuing work with Integrated Bradford and Bradford schools as the project develops.
· Participatory design processes for BSF Local Authorities; Knowsley, Hackney, Islington, Manchester, North Lincolnshire, Milton Keynes, Southwark.
· Membership of the DfES School Design Advisory Council.
· Acting as Advisors to consortia on user involvement strategies during bids for work under Building Schools for the Future.
· Ongoing advice to teachers, staff and pupils on involvement strategies working on BSF and the Primary School Capital programme. We are currently advising Dorset LEA on their stakeholder strategy and will run a design festival with them in May.
· We have also been involved in the public debate on the design and build of Academies
· Our publications include: The School Works Toolkit, Learning Buildings, A-Z of School Build and Design, 'From the Inside Out- Early Years setting which involve and inspire', with the DfES ' Designing school for Extended Services'
Our key emphasis has been on the involvement of users in the design process of new schools. There is a strong case for the benefits of involving school users in the design of school buildings. School Works and other participatory projects have shown the wide ranging, tangible benefits to be gained by involving people in shaping their local surroundings. Educationally, being involved in a design and build projects can help motivate pupils to feel a sense of belonging and stimulate learning and development. Kingsdale School in Southwark saw its GCSE results improve from 11% A-C grades in 2001 to 47% in 2004 as a result of the work of its visionary head, who saw the benefits of user involvement in highlighting issues with the school building that were causing learning and behavioural problems. He worked with the school community, the architects and School Works to solve them. Financially it is essential too; money will be wasted if school buildings don't fully respond to the needs of users.
User involvement is key to ensuring the sustainability of school buildings. It will ensure that the technology of 'green' buildings are used and understood effectively by their users and also that the built environment itself becomes a learning tool. In many cases sustainable design solutions for school buildings work better where the school has ownership over their building. If the users of a building do not understand or take ownership of expensive complex equipment it will be left unused because it is not understood.
In addition involving users in the design of a building will help to ensure that schools are fully inclusive environments and effectively support the needs of the community. This will help in the delivery of the Extended Schools agenda, but also support the move towards creating sustainable communities.
As a result of our work School Works have a number of issues which we would like to raise at the Education Select Committee inquiry:
o Over the past year we have become increasingly concerned that participation in school design is falling through the gaps in the BSF process.
o We suggest that there needs to be a more joined up approach to the work around citizenship, sustainable community development and the Every Child Matters agenda including the Extended Schools agenda. Well designed school buildings can support the implementation of these policies
o On a strategic level we feel that the Government's message on participation is in danger of being misunderstood. For example, tools such as the Design Quality indicators are essential for benchmarking design quality; however used alone they will not encourage school communities to think in a transformational way about the design of their school building and will not go far enough in encouraging user participation. In our view, this message is not being delivered clearly enough.
o We've already seen some attempts to ensure participation in building projects, not least in the Bristol and Bradford BSF bids. The current bidding and procurement process is very short and doesn't allow enough time for serious design considerations. We are concerned that local authorities and, as a consequence, construction supply chains bidding to win projects will see participation as a luxury rather than a requirement in the procurement process. From our experience, we believe that this will inevitably lead to a waste of time, money, resources and loss of good ideas.
o We found during our work with BSF pathfinder authorities that the current bidding process creates some unnecessary duplication in terms of contractors discussions with schools on design. Ideally this process could be rationalised so that communication between wider school communities and contractors was conducted as 'a single conversation'.
o User involvement strategies are not currently being addressed early enough in the design process by LEAs, schools and contractors. Without this early preparation participation will be tokenistic at best.
o In authorities where participation does happen, quality varies greatly ranging from meaningless consultation to visionary best practice. There is a need for a national minimum standard for participation in procurement strategies if we are to ensure a meaningful dialogue.
o We are calling on government to place mandatory participation firmly at the centre of the school design and build programme, in the same way it does for a range of other publicly driven initiatives, from regeneration projects to social care programmes. It needs to be explicit.
We would be happy to give evidence on our findings and issues which arise from them to the select committee. If you require any further information, please get in touch.
Yours Sincerely
Ty Goddard Managing Director
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