Memorandum submitted by School Works
School Works welcomes the Select Committee's
inquiry into Sustainable School Design.
In January we sent the Select Committee a letter
(not printed) outlining some of the learning we have developed
over the last five 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 LAs including; pathfinder LA Bradford,
Sunderland LA and Northampton LA.
— 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 LA
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:
— Over the past year we have become
increasingly concerned that participation in school design is
falling through the gaps in the BSF process.
— 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.
— 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.
— 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.
— 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".
— User involvement strategies are not
currently being addressed early enough in the design process by
LAs, schools and contractors. Without this early preparation participation
will be tokenistic at best.
— 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.
— 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.
June 2006
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