Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
MR MICHAEL
BUCHANAN, MR
DAVID LLOYD
JONES, MS
ANGELA RAWSON,
MS JANET
NEWTON AND
MR ALLAN
JARVIS
24 MAY 2006
Q20 Jeff Ennis: That is a very good
answer, but I am wondering if any of the other witnesses have
got any other common elements that a new school build should have
other than those already mentioned.
Mr Buchanan: Perhaps I could offer
four simple suggestions. One is that we are committed not just
in education, but more broadly, to an issue of personalisation
and this suggests that individual learners will have particular
needs and plans associated with them and different kinds of spaces,
often smaller spaces, where groups can work in quiet environments,
either gifted and talented children or perhaps children with special
educational needs requiring particular support. The second area,
I think, which is common to all is that we need to make a very
serious response to the 14-19 agenda and the breadth of the curriculum
in order to give many more opportunities to youngsters of that
age to progress and succeed, and the kinds of courses associated
with the new vocational diplomas again require different kinds
of spaces, although I do recognise that each individual school
will not be able to offer them all. Thirdly, in terms of inclusion,
special educational needs, social inclusion, the whole breadth
of inclusion, we need to get used to the concept that, within
schools, a range of adults drawn from a number of different agencies
will be working with young children and families and will require
different, again semi-confidential spaces for those targeted interventions
to take place. The fourth area, which is something that is very
significant, is that we need to up our game in relation to ICT
and the use of new technologies which clearly offer a significant
future for youngsters to be able to operate in a global society
in the 21st century and, if we get it wrong, we will definitely
fall behind other areas of the world.
Q21 Jeff Ennis: That was a very good
answer. Is the guidance from the DfES on the sorts of schools
expected from Building Schools for the Future clear enough or
should the guidance be more specific?
Ms Rawson: I think we have enough
guidance. I think the joining up of guidance with different policy
strands and with local needs is actually the trick. We can actually
drown in guidance and we have had enough guidance, I think, from
the various agencies. The key challenge, as I say, is how you
match that with policy strands around extended schools, inclusion,
looking at health and safety, travel to schools, green issues,
how you also match the particular curriculum and learning needs
of youngsters on an individual personalised basis, and I think
that is where the ongoing discussion and the work that we have
been doing with teachers and with communities is crucial because
we have to find a way through that because the only sustainable
solution is one where you get local buy-in.
Mr Lloyd Jones: Just following
up the question about guidance, particularly on the design side,
there is an enormous amount of guidance in educational design
now which actually we welcome very much because clearly a lot
of work has been put into it, but it is purely guidance. Actually
it is a very good way of testing one's own approach and testing
the group approach to a design of a school and that is how we
use it and we use it very productively in that way.
Q22 Chairman: But you said just a
moment ago that architects get on the site too late to make any
difference.
Mr Lloyd Jones: Often they do,
but sometimes they get on earlier. Once we do get on site, we
make our presence felt. We get teams together and we revisit some
of the decisions which have already been made.
Q23 Dr Blackman-Woods: I am a governor
at a school which is starting the process of rebuilding, so I
am very much at the receiving end of a lot of these policies and
guidance, but my question is really about the lead-in time for
a design and what ideally you think that should be?
Ms Newton: I think certainly in
terms of a brand-new build, if it is a brand-new build you are
indeed having, scoping the project if it is going to be involved
in a reorganisation can take 12 months, so it is identifying the
funding because clearly you need to know the funding envelope
that you have. If it is a Building Schools for the Future project,
the lead-in time is quite significant. We actually found that
we were a short-listed authority, a reserve authority in February
2004. We started the design process with our schools in March
2005 in terms of developing the brief, a very detailed brief,
and the vision that the schools wanted to deliver. We had significant
meetings with the architects throughout the spring and summer
and those meetings are still going on in terms of finalising the
detailed design, so from start to finish it will have been over
12 months and there is a significant commitment on the part of
the head teachers, the senior staff and the governors because,
the more you put into the process, the more you will get out of
the process. I think it is a case of making the time at the beginning,
recognising the commitment and making sure that you get it right,
and I would say up to 12 months as a minimum before you even get
on site.
Q24 Dr Blackman-Woods: I have to
say, what we are struggling with a bit is the "visioning"
as a governing body, not that we do not have ideas about what
we would like to see in the future, but I think all governing
bodies need assistance with how that then translates into buildings
and indeed what the design solutions are, so my question is really
what needs to happen to ensure that the key stakeholders, in terms
of putting a new building together, know what is possible in design
terms?
Mr Lloyd Jones: I think the key
to this is developing a brief and this can come about in a number
of ways. It can be generated by the governing body or it can be
generated by the school itself, by the local authority and so
on, but it needs to be a document or a file that gradually builds
up and takes on board all the sorts of ideas and concepts that
different people have which is then honed and developed to a point
where it becomes something that a designer can work to and pin
down the actual aspirations of the school, the achievements and
the goals.
Q25 Dr Blackman-Woods: But with the
process which exists at the moment, if you get one architect coming
in to a governing body, you are not necessarily, as the governing
body, going to know the whole range of solutions that are available
or the possible designs, so what needs to happen so that the governing
bodies and other people involved in the decision are aware of
a wider range of possibilities? How do we share good practice
and indeed how do we avoid the pitfalls?
Ms Rawson: One of the things that
we established early on, and this again was in 2004, was a visioning
group across the whole of the BSF Wave 1 schools and we got governors,
pupils, teaching and non-teaching staff and put them on a coach
and we took them round recent new builds. The way we organised
it was that we did a visit in the morning and then I followed
it up with a workshop for them to talk about their experience
of being in that different place, the things they liked and the
things that they felt would be barriers either for the community,
because you want the community to come into the school, or for
young people, about the sorts of spaces that were available for
them, the sizes of the classrooms, the light, the environment,
all of those things. It was a very practical exercise, but at
least people started to build up, if you like, their own internal
criteria for what they felt their school of the future should
have.
Q26 Chairman: What did your people
think of the new builds? Was it similar to Allan's?
Ms Rawson: Well, we did not sort
of dismiss anything outright because, in each of the schools that
we went to visit, people saw some of the features where they thought,
"Yes, that would work for us".
Q27 Chairman: So different from Allan's
scoring.
Mr Jarvis: I support Angela's
remarks. I think you need quite consciously to create a research
phase in procuring your new schools in which, not acting school
by school, but acting collaboratively because in that way you
capture a lot of good thinking that would otherwise escape you,
so working collaboratively between schools and with architects
and advisers and, with the benefit of support from CABE, for example,
or from Toby over there in the corner and his team at the Design
Council, you drill down into some of the possibilities, see some
examples and yes, you do exactly what Angela has said. You go
to school after school after school, you see a feature in one
school which delivers one outcome that you like, but you see other
things that do not deliver all the range of outcomes that you
require, so you go to another school and see one of the other
outcomes delivered and then you can have an iterative process
with architects in which you discuss how you can capture both
those outcomes rather than having to surrender one in order to
achieve the other. That can only be done if you have quite a detailed
and quite a consciously designed research phase which brings together
the full range of stakeholders rather than simply, for example,
to quote one example I know which I shall leave nameless, where
it is all being done by a local authority asset manager and the
schools are not involved in the process at all.
Q28 Dr Blackman-Woods: Could the
Building Schools for the Future team at the DfES do more, do you
think, to inform governing bodies and others about what is available
and what seems to have worked, get some evaluation, some feedback?
Would that be an important thing to do?
Ms Newton: I think there is certainly
a role for the DfES to share and disseminate good practice because
there is very much a mixed bag of provision in terms of the good
design and I think, where design has worked well, there is an
opportunity to share that with the school community, so I think,
yes, the DfES could effectively signpost good design. I think
in terms of local authority, there is a strong role in having
a client team and that client team does effectively liaise through
groups, such as the Education Building and Development Officers'
Group, which the DfES attend, so there are networks in place where
good design could be signposted, promoted and shared.
Dr Blackman-Woods: We have been talking
about the difficulties that people in education might have in
getting to grips with design solutions. Is there an issue the
other way round about architects not sufficiently understanding
education and can you tell us what is happening and what should
happen to ensure that architects do keep up to date with what
is happening in education and indeed so that they are able to
vision it for the future?
Q29 Chairman: I hope you watch Teachers'
TV every night!
Mr Lloyd Jones: We keep up to
date as far as we can with developments of educational research.
We are particularly interested in any feedback which comes out
of the DfES on sustainable issues in particular because this is
an area that is relatively new in schools. I am particularly thinking
of environmental sustainability and just how buildings perform
because one has to determine how the value and the cost of the
building, which we have not touched on before, is distributed
through the building and to get feedback on how the building performs
in relation to the money spent in particular areas is absolutely
vital to us as architects. Education is our field and we are absolutely
enthusiastic about it, so we absorb what is going on and take
on board as much as we can and try to present these issues to
our clients.
Ms Rawson: The other aspect is
how you prepare the companies, including architects, who are proposing
to be your private sector partner and, again, investing time to
ensure that they understand the education vision that you want
to achieve as they are putting in their bids. One of the things
we did was to have a bidder's day. We spent time explaining the
vision, but also we had the feedback from the pupils from the
design festival displayed, and what was very interesting when
we came to evaluate bids was to what extent the proposals for
designs had actually picked up on what the youngsters were saying
and what had come out as part of the vision. I think, again, it
is that early preparation, investing time in making sure that,
whoever you choose (and the architects are part of that package),
they are very clear about what it is that you are seeking to achieve.
Q30 Chairman: Is anyone brave enough,
the students, the architects or anyone ever to the say, and my
team are going to groan at this, that small is beautiful—the
Schumacher doctrine—that some of these schools are too darn
big for human scale? Does anyone ever say that? The stock answer
we get is, "Well, if it is well designed and big, it is all
right", but there is a bit of me still when I go to primary
schools that thinks this is the right size. Children understand
this size of a building and environment, and then they go to the
big school and they get lost. Is there no word out there that
schools can be too big?
Mr Jarvis: When we engaged the
pupils in the design process in Bradford that is precisely one
of the points they brought out. So, when we wrote our output specs
in the schools, we wrote them with a view to getting the architects
to find methods of capturing the feeling of a small school in
what is actually quite a big school, and that is the one of the
reasons why we have gone for a series of teaching blocks with
break-out spaces in the centre of them with a sense of space,
we have gone for a school within a school for Key Stage 3, in
two other schools in Phase 1 in Bradford, so that the youngest
children will spend most of their time in their own block, in
their own accommodation, learning the skills of being in a mainstream
secondary school of a very large size rather than being tossed
in at the deep end, as tends to happen in many schools at the
moment. That is part of feedback, again, from the children, and
this is something I care very much about. I have been terrifically
impressed with the knowlegeability of the architects, although,
to be fair, the architects in Bradford engaged with the processes
all have a specialism in architecture for educational purposes,
but we have also been terrifically impressed with the wisdom and
the understanding of the children, and what we have neglected
in the past in providing schools is the children's perspective—we
have looked at it purely from the teacher's perspective—and
when you listen to the children, they will tell you how to design
a school that delivers on those outcomes and addresses those concerns
you have raised.
Mr Lloyd Jones: I would say almost
word for word what Allan has just said. I think the engagement
of children, pupils, is vital in the process, and, again, if you
can get in early that helps. If you can develop a school where
the pupils understand what is going on, can do programmes that
relate to the construction process, to engaging with different
areas of design, particularly sustainability, of course, by the
time they move into it they feel it is their building, they gain
ownership of it, and the same is true, of course, with the staff.
If you can get that feeling and also are able to break down the
schools in the way that Angela was talking about so it is not
this great big megalith, that helps as well.
Q31 Mr Chaytor: Chairman, can I pursue
the question of sustainability and ask Janet and David specifically
what it means. As the representatives of the surveyors and the
architects, what is your definition of a sustainable building,
specifically a sustainable school?
Mr Lloyd Jones: Sustainability
has developed into a very all-embracing category, but, from my
point of view, it arises from three areas to do with social benefit,
social engagement, it is to do with local economy and how the
economy develops in relation to an intervention and it is to do
with the environment and ensuring that climate change is halted.
There are these three spans that interconnect, and it is very
difficult to deal with one to the exclusion of the other. As architects
we tend to get more involved with the environmental side. There
is an enormous amount of work that has been done in developing
environmental measures in order to reduce the impact that buildings
have on the environment. The buildings in developed countries
are responsible for 50%, as you probably know, of carbon-dioxide
pollution in the world, and that is why it is so important to
design sustainability in terms of using materials that are sympathetic
with environmental issues and minimising energy.
Q32 Chairman: Michael, you have been
quiet for a while. Do you want to give us your definition of sustainability?
Mr Buchanan: Yes. I would describe
it in a slightly different way. There are issues which David has
spoken about which are absolutely right about sustainable buildings—the
materials that they use and environmental factors, energy conservation
and generation, waste water, lifecycle costs, all the kinds of
things associated with buildings—but I think within the
education sector there is a broader understanding of sustainability
in relation to schools which are sustainable as organisations,
where the leadership is sustainable. There is a great book recently
written on that subject by Andy Hargreaves and Dean Fink, for
example, talking about endurance and succession and distributed
leadership, and so on.
Q33 Mr Chaytor: How can the design
of a building influence the permanence of the leadership?
Mr Buchanan: This goes back very
much to the first question that Mr Sheerman asked. Does it matter?
My view is possibly slightly different from my colleagues in that
I think that buildings are not the answer to transformation in
education. They can assist and they can assist particularly in
removing obstacles to a more flexible curriculum and so on, but
they form part of an education vision which is also very much
to do with leadership and curriculum and working practices, and
so on, so the building can support a lot of changes within education
other than physical changes, cultural and working changes, and
I think they are very significant in terms of schools as organisations.
Because schools, of course, are not factories, they are not conveyor
belts, they are places where human interactions take place, and
therefore all the factors which affect the quality of human interactions
are important. Some of those can be influenced very heavily by
buildings, others much more likely so, but, nonetheless, they
are all important.
Q34 Mr Chaytor: Janet, from your
perspective, what is sustainability and how can those concepts
be implemented in the design of the buildings in Lancashire, for
example?
Ms Newton: Certainly sustainability
is one of the key priorities for the county council and obviously
is a central plank to the education vision that we have developed.
I would pick up the issues around the community, the economy and
the environment. These are in perspective. We have been very keen
to follow the BREEAM ratings to try to secure a very good rating
through BREEAM, we have tried to maximise the opportunities for
curriculum learning; so we are putting small wind turbines on
each of the schools, we are introducing photovoltaic cells, we
are having biomass boilers, we are actually looking to achieve
very sustainable schools from an environmental perspective. In
terms of contributing to the local economy, Burnley and Pendle
are very deprived poor areas, there is a skills shortage, many
of the jobs are low-paid, low-skilled, and we are very keen to
use the Building Schools for the Future programme to contribute
to a long-term regeneration of that area.
Q35 Mr Chaytor: For example, does
that include using local labour or local companies as part of
the contracts? How do you deal with the issue of preference for
local firms?
Ms Newton: In a way I am just
coming to that. There is a housing market renewal strategy running
through the ODPM at the same time, so there is a significant programme
of building. Certainly within Building Schools for the Future
it is PFI. It is looking to establish a long-term strategic partnership.
The exclusivity will turn on performance. We have key performance
indicators and, within our key performance indicators, we have
agreed targets with our preferred bidder about the percentage
of local labour that would be used in construction, the local
labour that would be used through facilities management. We have
negotiated 24 craft apprenticeships year on year for local students.
We have negotiated mentoring opportunities. As part of our package
in terms of the community, we are looking at having the facilities
open from 6.30 in the morning until 6.30 at night exclusively
for the schools. That is 600 hours of additional community use.
We are embracing the Extended Schools Agenda, but we are actually
looking at the full service Extended Schools so that the schools
become a focal point for the community. We are actually encouraging
the schools to feel as if they are owned by the community. We
are co-locating public libraries, hydrotherapy facilities; we
are putting in additional big lottery funds in terms of the sports
provision, so we are looking to create as sustainable schools
as we possibly can within the community.
Q36 Mr Chaytor: Given that PFI is
involved here, how sustainable are the economics of this and what
are the taxpayers of Burnley and Pendle going to be paying in
20 or 30 years' time? What is your judgment about the economic
sustainability of PFI verses other schemes or the impact on individual
school budgets as time goes by?
Ms Newton: We have had to go through
a very robust financial assessment at each stage of the project;
so we had an outlined business case that was assessed by the Treasury,
by the Project Review Group, by Partnership UK, which actually
secured the funding envelope for the projects in Burnley and Pendle.
We are now preparing a final business case, which will go before
the Treasury hopefully in June, July. Within that we have to have
guaranteed the sustainability in terms of future pupil numbers,
that the county council and the schools can meet the funding gap,
the affordability gap, that we have got the legal agreements from
the governing bodies over a 25-year period they will contribute
part of their school budget towards the on-going unitary charge.
I would say, from a financial perspective we have gone through
a very rigorous process and are comfortable that we have been
scrutinised at a national level and also locally that these schools
and the PFI process will represent value for money.
Q37 Mr Chaytor: Would it have been
economically more sustainable not to have gone down the PFI route?
Ms Newton: I think the attractions
for the PFI route are in terms of the contributions to the lifecycle
cost. Having built these brand new state-of-the-art schools, there
will be a commitment on the part of the county council and the
school community and working with the contractor that the school
buildings will be maintained throughout that 25-year period, and
so PFI does represent value for money for us and we will get an
asset at the end of 25 years that is still in exceedingly good
condition.
Q38 Paul Holmes: You said you have
got the agreement of governors for 25 years ahead to contribute
in, but what happens if in five years' time under the Education
Bill that is just going through they become a trust or they become
an Academy; they are independent outside the system, the governors
have completely changed, they are appointed by the new trust or
the Academy owner. Are they still bound by this agreement?
Ms Newton: Yes, because the governors'
agreement actually reflects change of law, and so it will be a
25-year agreement and the money that the governors are contributing
is the money that the governors receive through the formula allocations,
delegations to schools, that specifically covers the premises
aspects of their schools. They already get that funding within
their budget, but, yes, it is a 25-year agreement, and we have
been at pains to make sure that governors are fully aware of the
implications of what they are signing.
Q39 Paul Holmes: What happens if
over the next 10, 15 years with falling rolls and with competition
between schools and popular schools being allowed to expand as
they like, and so on, one of these brand new schools has to close?
What happens then?
Ms Newton: Clearly, in terms of
satisfying the local authority that it is value for money and
satisfying the Treasury that it is value for money, we have had
to look at the pupil numbers. It does tend to get into crystal
ball gazing; I will be perfectly honest with you. We can look
at children who have already been born and we can project forward
the number of students over the life of their school. What we
cannot do is anticipate the children who have not been born, but
we also take into account inward and outward migration. We have
a lot of years' experience in terms of predicting future student
numbers and we are satisfied in the authority that the schools
are sustainable over the next 25 years. In the programme in Burnley
and Pendle we are taking out several thousand surplus places to
ensure that the schools will be sustainable.
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