What trends are emerging in school design, and how can innovation be achieved on limited budgets? These questions were addressed by a panel of experts at a recent AT conference – held in partnership with SIG Design & Technology and British Gypsum

Photos
Hufton & Crow, Jack Hobhouse

Conference Participants

Lee Bennett
Partner and school design lead, Sheppard Robson
Ian Dryden
National Specification Manager, SIG Design & Technology
Carol Lees
Partner, Hawkins Brown
Matthew Sexton
Head of Advocacy & Standardisation, British Gypsum
Sharon Wright
Senior associate, The Learning Crowd

The entire landscape of school building procurement has changed drastically in the past decade, with residual projects in the ambitious, well-funded but controversial Building Schools for the Future initiative (scrapped in 2010) coming to fruition, leaving an void of austerity with little capacity to fund basic provision, let alone foster innovation. However, as speakers at AT’s education conference showed, a focus on adding value and doing more with less has resulted in significant work that builds on the BSF experience.

Sharon Wright, senior associate at The Learning Crowd and author of ‘Future Schools’, posed the question ‘What makes a good school?’, immediately qualifying it by asking ‘What is a school?’ – listing the variety of types among the 24,000 schools in England alone, from state nursery to academy via special needs and co-located schools. In recent years, she suggested, design has often been squeezed out or compressed as needs have been prioritised over outcomes. In this situation, there’s a tendency to become obsessed with the brief, and it’s important that an accommodation schedule should be regarded as a tool rather than a solution, especially because many schools are first-time clients, and they can feel feel trapped by the diagram.

For Wright, ‘adjacencies’ and ‘variety’ are watchwords, with a balance between ‘cells and bells’ and multi-use spaces, albeit designed in the knowledge that everything will inevitably change. In the drive for flexible, adaptable space, she stressed, formal learning provision can be neglected.

In terms of doing more with less, Wright noted, restricted urban sites are driving the development of a new generation of high-rise schools in which play-space provision is a key challenge. Repurposing buildings for education also poses particular challenges, though whether every building can be made into a school remains doubtful, Wright suggested: “can an office block work?”

In difficult budgetary times, with barely sufficient funding to cover maintenance, small sums must be made to go a long way. Wright cited the Charles Dickens School in Southwark, south London, where the head teacher had a modest sum to spend. Recruitment issues, exacerbated by high housing costs, led to advice to invest in upgrading the staff room. A bespoke reconfiguration was devised and built over the summer vacation, with a ‘kitchen’ and ‘living area’ which now enhance both conversation and collaboration.

Hawkins Brown’s Inverton building doubles the capacity of Ivydale Primary School in Southwark, south London. Completed in 2017, it is located near the existing Victorian school building, and the biggest challenge was to ensure both buildings felt part of one school. A triangular pattern of green glazed brick gives a bold identity. This pattern and colour scheme is continued inside creating a welcoming, calm and safe environment, whilst providing a more ‘grown-up’ feel as a stepping stone to secondary school. The engagement focussed on learning opportunities for the children, including design consultations, site visits, model-making and poster competitions.  

Internally, the layout is a simple square arrangement, fully accessible throughout. Staff and administrative spaces are located to the front of the building, offering a view to the street that connects the two schools. Classrooms are on opposite sides with a central double-height atrium and hall, providing flexible performance spaces in line with the arts specialism. The Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) and glulam structure, provides a visible understanding of the building structure, as well as adding to the calming atmosphere.

Modular construction can offer a solution to specific needs, Wright acknowledged, but there is a significant challenge in reconciling a grid with a range of spaces. Mixed-use, most often combining homes with a school, can work too – and the covered play space they often imply can prove more useable. Meanwhile, agancies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are trying some different approaches, including co-location, to achieve efficiencies.

Funding, Wright concluded, is “stupidly tight”, but small amounts can make a significant difference, as long as architects’ priority is to design buildings that “enhance student and staff wellbeing”.

Matthew Sexton, head of advocacy and standardisation at British Gypsum, focussed on research into the internal environment of schools, highlighting how robustness is key, not only to withstand day-to-day traffic, but also accommodate modification needs and ensure low maintenance. Increasingly, internal partitions in schools are made from standard plasterboard (84 per cent since 2014), and 80 per cent need regular maintenance, with significant damage incidents occurring once per year in every school. Repairs can be costly, time consuming and potentially disruptive of well-trafficked areas.

Maintenance costs are important, Sexton stressed, not least because Ofsted inspectors can look at school financial management. And good-looking, well-maintained schools matter to students, staff and parents alike. Sexton closed with a personal plea for careful door handle and doorstop design, as well as specification to ensure robustness and inbuilt fixing strength, and he looked forward to the development of test standards more appropriate for schools.

Carol Lees, partner and school sector lead at Hawkins Brown, focussed on the practice’s redevelopment of six primary schools in the London Brorough of Southwark, where an acute need for new student places was backed by a keenness to make excellent places for learning.

CLT has been used wherever possible, including in the two fully new buildings – Ivydale and Keyworth. The former replaces a listed school, increasing capacity from two- to four-form entry, and with a focus on the arts underlined by a ‘Fox in the Forest’ theme which recurs in the exterior’s triangular brick pattern as well as in the interior. Keyworth adds a new building of two clear volumes to the existing Vicorian board school, with new classrooms, a multi-use hall and kitchen.

Sheppard Robson’s £15m Notre Dame Catholic College in Everton was the first school delivered under the Liverpool Schools Model in which a flexible and economic ‘shell’ embraces interior components that provide a mix of learning and social spaces bespoke to the school’s requirements – a ‘village’ of enclosed and open spaces.

The interior combines traditional classrooms with more open break-out and study areas. Cellular teaching spaces occupy three sides of the building encircling a central zone with a performance space, amphitheatre, chapel and demountable classrooms. The openness is intended to reduce barriers between students and staff, helping foster a sense of community while allowing for passive supervision. Contrasting with the open central zone, classrooms are peaceful spaces where ventilation and natural lighting create optimum conditions for focused work. 

The 950-pupil school was built in 56 weeks for £1,460/m², including full FF&E, groundworks and consultant fees. The design can be adapted and rearranged over the lifecycle of the school, or even reconfigured for another function.

Ian Dryden, SIG Design & Technology’s National Specification Manager for Bituminous Membranes, focussed on issues related to the maintenance and failure of school roofs, and their performance in terms of solar gain, insulation and condensation. Promoting the government-backed Condition Improvement Fund (CIF), intended to assist academies and sixth-form colleges to keep their buildings safe and in good order, he drew on SIG’s experience in helping architects and clients prepare for the annual bidding rounds through pre-inspections and surveys. Typical issues include interstitial condensation, lack of, or poorly installed vapour control barriers, and issues arising from ad hoc and incremental maintenance.

Lee Bennett, partner and school design lead at of Sheppard Robson, examined how political shifts had impacted on the funding for school buildings, from the ambitious Building Schools for the Future programme, which ran from 2007 until its abandonment in 2011 ushered in more austere times.

Sheppard Robson’s Sidney Stringer Academy (Coventry, 2012), Waingels College (Wokingham, 2012) and St Ambrose College (Trafford, 2013) demonstrate the diversity of approaches that BSF fostered, both in pedagogical dimension (St Ambrose adopted a highly efficient concentric plan), through to construction method (Waingels was an early all-CLT project). “Can we afford not to use timber?”, Bennett was prompted to ask.

The nature of the post-BSF procurement was characterised by the Liverpool Schools Investment Programme, in which the city has invested in 17 new schools. The streamlined approach aims for simple procurement, repeatable designs, and maximum flexibility with clear-span spaces. Within the programme, Sheppard Robson’s projects included Notre Dame at Everton, Archbishop Beck in Aintree and Archbishop Blanch at Toxteth. In closing, Bennett showed a potential future direction in the Barony Campus, a Scottish co-locating project due to complete in 2020, in which five schools are being amalgamated into one.

Sheppard Robson is currently on site with the £70m 23,000-square-metre Barony Campus for East Ayrshire Council in Scotland. The campus will house 2,500 students and 300 staff in five facilities, including a secondary school, a primary school, a nursery, an 80-place supported learning centre and 30 additional places for students with special educational needs.

The building is organised as four linked structures, with three school pavilions and sports centre. The radial geometry helps to break down the overall mass while giving each element of the school its own identity. Positioned within a parkland setting, an existing running track has been retained and upgraded, and public access maintained around the site and along the riverside.

The connected elements build on innovative approaches that Sheppard Robson has developed over many years, including with Liverpool City Council, with an economic, adaptive shell housing different learning and social spaces.

Each pavilion features perimeter classrooms around central ‘Learning Plazas’. A significant proportion of the building’s energy is generated by on-site renewables, including photovoltaics and a biomass system which feeds a district heating network.