Shiny buildings overflowing with technology? Children whose open mouths could be used for the middle letter of the "Wow!" on their tongues? A write-up in the education media? All well and good, but away from the cameras and invited guests at the opening of a rebuilt school lurk tales of PFI tensions, odd designs and daunting contracts stuffed full of three-letter acronyms.
When seemingly everything associated with a school — buildings, ethos, infrastructure, procedures — gets dug up and replanted, it can be tempting to see Building Schools for the Future as a "year zero" moment, one where existing practice is cast aside and a brave new world awaits. Couple this with a few minutes browsing the website of any BSF provider and you might conclude that the magic dust of technology coats these new buildings with an innate sense of innovation and change — a Field of Dreams-esque "if you build it, they will learn..." approach — which will excite some and terrify others.
Current work with learning platforms shows that a programme like this won't "automagically" change an organisation's culture; instead, careful planning, preparation and wide involvement of stakeholders is critical. If BSF is about the transformation of learning, then it's important that some of those things that can help to make transformation happen are established beforehand. Does a school have existing procedures for how it deals with technology and other new aspects emphasised by BSF?
Such things can smooth the process as a school moves into BSF and enable it to manage its service providers more effectively — otherwise a school with no existing practice might be steered into taking up systems it neither understands nor believes in, and which may have been designed for another school.
A concern for many local authorities is the existing investment and infrastructure that has been put in place, for example, by the learning platforms programme. Again, schools or local authorities with little idea about how such tools can transform the curriculum for them risk being offered less than ideal solutions that may represent someone else's view of learning. One way round this would be to specify that any existing learning platform services are outside the remit of the BSF project — however this would require reliance on the service, whether it's a broadband service, email or learning platform, and might need the LA or regional broadband consortium to agree to cover the risk by ensuring that broadband or the learning platform is always available.
BSF will affect all schools, but to ensure it meets their needs it's critical that those with influence try to extract some of the common threads from the current programmes washing over them — innovation across a new curriculum, changing culture in schools, collaborative working, the effective use of appropriate technology to transform learning — and build them in to their existing practice as early as possible. This way, we might build a future for schools.
Ian Usher is e-learning coordinator for Buckinghamshire county council. He writes here in a personal capacity
