Not many headteachers would include a footbridge in plans for a new school, but a footbridge was seen as crucial to the success of Gorton education village in east Manchester.
"Yes, it cost us money," says headteacher Guy Hutchence , "but we worked out that the route to the building was important to the community. We want everyone in our community, from Longsight and Levenshulme, to walk over that bridge."
The bridge also serves as an apt metaphor for the community links being forged by Hutchence and fellow head, Judith O'Kane. The village is the culmination of four years of planning and research among residents, students, governors and staff to make education and aspirations more accessible to local people.
Both Hutchence and O'Kane share space in the £25m village, which officially opens with a community day on September 6. Gorton education village is the colocation site for Hutchence's Cedar Mount high school — an amalgamation of three schools perceived to be failing in 2000 — and O'Kane's Melland high school, a specialist SEN college for 11-16s and post-16.
There are hopes that a primary school will be built on an adjacent plot of land within the eight-acre campus. "From 2004, Judith and I worked on the concept of an education village, because we felt that what our communities needed desperately was 'cradle to grave' entitlement of high quality education on one campus," says Hutchence. "We drafted a joint vision and were in a good position when Building Schools for the Future (BSF) first surfaced."
The BSF consortium behind the village is a local education partnership(LEP) which comprises Manchester City Council and design and build contractor Laing O'Rourke. In turn Laing O'Rourke engaged design team Ellis Williams and the two built the footbridge.
Shared spaces
Areas such as learning zones, the food hall and auditorium are shared spaces for both schools in the village. The profound and complex needs of some of Melland's 140 students are met by specialist learning areas, such as an interactive sensory room.
O'Kane shares Hutchence's commitment to links with the community, which she sees as a reciprocal process of sharing skills and opportunities in an area of third-generation unemployment. Local youth volunteers, for example, so impressed O'Kane that she now employs them as teaching assistants.
The new facilities will help O'Kane to cement relationships with a number of diverse local organisations. Manchester City Football Club, which already offers work placements for Melland's post-16 students at its museum, will use the village's sports halls and all-weather pitches to coach students and other young people.
WFA Media, a social enterprise group, has already started work in the new multimedia studio, fi tted by Audio Alliance, on a range of cross–curricular projects with Melland pupils.
"We are about making learning inspirational," says O'Kane, "and our new school has the facilities to help us do this." Melland's role as a specialist college/support school means it partners or supports many local high and primary schools. The new location, a far cry from its dilapidated forerunner with its cluster of prefab classroøms, will boost Melland in helping other schools with inclusive projects.
Cedar Mount, where 44 languages are spoken, had already been praised by Ofsted inspectors for its inclusivity. Hutchence is keen that this reputation will ontinue at the village and has invited employees from youth agency Connexions and the immigrant advisory service, East District New Arrivals Support Team, to work in a shared administrative support area "in order to have a presence in the building".
The invitation to Manchester's Lord Mayor, Mavis Smitheman — renowned across the city as a sky-diving grandmother with purple hair — to open the village fits in with Hutchence's ambitions to inspire the older generation to join adult education classes in the building after 3pm.
Local groups are already queuing up to use the village: Gorton Philharmonic and Gorton Community Choir will use the auditorium, while Arawak Walton housing association, which has helped pupils with work on sustainable buildings, sponsors the school's cricket team and will hold its AGM there.
Direct involvement
"Arawak Walton really values its relationship with Cedar Mount," says Cym Dsouza, its chief executive. "It gives us a direct way to be involved in the education and development of the children, many of whom live in our properties."
The dedicated community entrance to the village boasts separate parking and toilets and access to the sports hall, food technology area, auditorium and to the hydrotherapy pool, where mother and baby swimming classes are expected to be held. External learners and local businesses can use an IT suite of 100 computers in the learning resource centre. Its 100 computers, plus ICT infrastructure, were provided by Ramesys, which has won major ICT contract for Manchester's programme.
Tracey Bishop, assistant head at Mount, has spent the past four years encouraging input from the students about the school's design and sharing information about the development with parents and the community noticing more parental involvement, with attendance at parents' evenings up to 60 from 20 % a few years ago.
"Education is not just about the time the children spend in this building," says Bishop. "It's about giving higher aspirations to the parents as well."
Weblinks
Audio Alliance: audioalliance.net
Ellis Williams: ewa.co.uk
Gorton education village: manchester.gov.uk
Laing O'Rourke:laingorourke.com
Ramesys: ramesys.co.uk
WFA Media: wfamedia.co.uk
