For a programme the size of Building Schools for the Future (BSF), there is a surprising lack of guidelines. "There is no one way to do it; no one has a rule book," says deputy head Heather Scott, whose school — Allerton high in Leeds — moves into new BSF premises this month.
In fact, the lack of "rules" is one of the great opportunities of BSF, allowing local authorities and individual schools a rare chance to come up with their own educational vision of the future to meet the needs of their own communities. This is not a programme about standardisation or "one-size-fits-all".
But it also presents BSF with one of its major tasks, as the programme gathers momentum: what is the most eff ective way for schools and local authorities to avoid each other's mistakes and learn the lessons from what has gone before?
Partnerships for Schools (PfS) offers a number of ways for those involved in BSF partnerships to share experiences, including access to case studies on its recently relaunched website, seminars and workshops, and its work with the 4Ps (Public Private Partnerships Programme) to support local authorities.
Post-occupancy evaluation of all new BSF buildings, which allows building users to comment on, and disseminate, how well objectives have been met, is due to take place this autumn for the fi rst wave of BSF schools that opened in 2007. BSF guidelines dictate that schools are evaluated a year after they have begun operating.
Allerton high's Scott says she learn ed a lot during the BSF process from visiting other new schools, and her school is already passing on advice to local authorities starting BSF. One of her key sources of support has been Darren Dobson, BSF project coordinator from the Education Leeds building team, who has a construction and surveying background. "We say to local authorities, 'you must have a Darren'. You need someone with technical know-how. We meet every week and speak every day on the phone."
Dobson says: "I found myself [being] a mediator; it's a very different language in the construction industry."
When he first started work on design ideas for the new Allerton high four-anda- half years ago, he found staff taking a traditional approach to their new classrooms and asking for "rows of regular boxes".
"I spent many hours talking to each member of staff , trying to pull them back from saying 'I want it to look like this' and getting them to say instead what they wanted to do with the building."
Deadlines and logistics
Gradually, a more adventurous and truly 21st-century design emerged, which features clusters of faculty-based teaching rooms known as "pods", each with a "break-out space" where students can work more independently. In some classrooms, the pods have "bendy walls" that can be taken down (overnight) to provide larger teaching spaces. There is a glasscovered central "street", an amphitheatre, a multi-faith centre (for community use), and outside learning spaces with comfy seats and coffee tables.
Andrew Jones, senior design manager at Interserve, the construction and services company that began building the school in March 2007, says he likes its "light, airy feel" — compared with the "oppressive" feel of the old school, built in 1939 and due for demolition this autumn. The new school will be energy-efficient, he says, and the "vision panels" built into every classroom will help prevent bullying as well as enabl ing teachers to supervise students working in the break-out spaces.
The process took one year from the first design submissions, by each of three bidders, to reaching a deal with Interserve — some six months faster than many other BSF projects to date. "It's all to do with attitude of mind," says Jones. "It's important to work as a team with the school and local authority to solve issues. It's all about understanding each other's needs."
Scott, who took charge of the project when she joined the school three years ago, says the most demanding aspect of it has been "deadlines and logistics" — including, during building work, supervising a 10-minute walk for every single exam candidate to sit their exams in a former primary school.
"You lurch from feeling you're on top of things to waking up at three in the morning thinking you've forgotten to do something," she says. "BSF — it's three little letters, but it's three years of your life to make things better for the children. You have to live it and breathe it to get it right."
She is excited to see how students will use the new building and expects to see changes in teaching and learning "once we've settled in". But the future is hard to predict: "We don't know what curriculum we'll be teaching, or if diplomas will take off, and we're teaching students for jobs that don't yet exist. That's really hard."
Jenny Templar, assistant head, has supervised the new school's £1.6m ICT budget. "The biggest challenge was planning in advance, when technology changes so quickly. So I constantly researched — visiting ICT exhibitions and other schools, and trialling new IT." RM has been appointed the main ICT supplier to BSF schools across Leeds.
Facilities management has proved "a bigger issue than we thought", says Scott. Because the school will be a "tenant" in the new building, from 7am to 9pm on weekdays, the job of Tricia Pounder, head of support services, will include negotiating with Interserve and logging a call to its facilities management help desk every time, for instance, a room needs to be rearranged. "I'm apprehensive," Pounder admits. "My concerns are knowing exactly what's in the contract."
Allerton high students, meanwhile, feel they have had a say in the design of their new school, with school council members contributing to choice of colours, furnishings and a new school logo.
"'Paradise' is what the grammar school girls called Allerton high when it was built in 1939," says 15-year-old Richard Crossley. "That's probably what people will say about our new school — but in diff erent words."
Weblinks
Allerton school: allertonhigh.leeds.sch.uk
Education Leeds: educationleeds.co.uk
Interserve: interserveplc.co.uk
PfS: www.partnershipsforschools.org.uk
RM: rm.com
