Getting good design for Building Schools for the Future

Mairi Johnson believes transforming the way teachers teach and children learn makes new demands on school buildings and grounds.

CABE has stepped up its support for Building Schools for the Future (BSF), the government's £45 billion programme that will see 3,500 secondary schools built or renewed by 2020.

BSF is not just about replacing crumbling schools. It represents a break with the old way of doing things and a radical rethink of secondary education as we move into the next decades of the 21st century.

Transforming the way teachers teach and children learn and provide opportunities for the whole community, however, requires something very different from school buildings and grounds.

In 2006 CABE assessed the quality of secondary schools completed during the previous five years, before the BSF programme had began. What this showed clearly was that the quality of school design was not good enough to fulfil the aspirations of BSF - too few were inspiring, innovative, flexible and environmentally sustainable.

Less than one in five was rated as good or excellent and half were badly designed and poorly built. While most performed well on size, safety and accessibility - all of which are regulated - nearly all failed to tackle basic issues of environmental sustainability such as providing natural daylight and ventilation.

School design had hardly changed over the previous 50 years and failed to reflect both government education reforms and new ideas about teaching and learning, including the massive impact of IT. Although there is no certainty about group sizes for teaching, the need for private study areas or the extent of remote working from home or other locations, what we do know is that education in the future will be very different from today. School buildings therefore need to be flexible and adaptable.

A well-designed school encourages creative teaching and successful learning. It has a direct impact on children's performance and attainment; it attracts good teachers, raises morale and provides an incentive for staff to stay. Poor design, on the other hand, often stands in the way of raising educational standards. This has been amply documented by research in the UK and abroad. It is also clear from what teachers and students tell us - they know exactly what works and what doesn't.

Schools should raise aspirations - for students, teachers and the whole community. Good design can create a school that welcomes everyone, that makes children feel proud of their school and see learning as exciting. It can deter bullying and create a safer environment. Children want classrooms with daylight and fresh air, civilised dining and communal areas, and outdoor spaces - with some protection from the rain - where they can learn, play sport and be with their friends. Durable finishes that age well, not scruffily, will discourage graffiti and vandalism. And - now a priority - a school must be able to adapt to and mitigate climate change.

BSF provides a one-off opportunity to get the very best secondary schools - we won't be able to go back and rethink in15 years' time. Achieving high-quality design and value for money is, however, complex. The government is therefore funding CABE, which is working closely with Partnerships for Schools, to provide free support and guidance to all local authorities involved in BSF.

Part of that support is the new schools design panel - a group of specialist experts offering detailed advice on school building designed through BSF. The panel will help local authorities evaluate the design quality for all BSF schools; indicate how bidders could refine their proposals; and ensure that design quality remains consistently high for all BSF schools from now on.

The panel is headed by Ken Shuttleworth, of Make Architects and a CABE commissioner, and it met for the first time on 10 July 2007. Designs are assessed against 10 criteria, ranging from creating a school that students and the community are proud of to putting the right strategies in place for environmental sustainability.

Particularly important is getting a brief in the first place that will realise the ambitions of BSF. And to get a good brief you need a strong client - schools and local authorities who know what they want and are able set a clear vision for their schools.

CABE's new practical guide - Creating excellent secondary schools - demystifies the process of designing and building a new secondary school. Step-by-step, it takes clients from the earliest stages of ensuring that staff, students and the wider community have their say; to working effectively with architects, contractors and consultants; right through to the finished building.

The guide identifies 10 points for a successful secondary school - from high-quality design that inspires learning to a sustainable approach to design, construction and environmental servicing. It also includes 13 case studies to illustrate the process of designing a secondary school.

For example, in Bradford, the city's three BSF schools were consulted even before the procurement process began. Buttershaw High School decided that it wanted a single group of students from every year group to work with all three bid teams in order to build the student perspective into the design. And at the Academy of St Francis of Assisi in Liverpool - a city academy specialising in the environment - the design of the school enables students to learn through the building itself what environmental sustainability looks like and means.

CABE is confident that with increasingly experienced clients and designers, and the advice of its schools design panel, the next waves of BSF schools will actually be capable of transforming secondary education.