What will our schools look like in 10 years? Ecobuild news 17th July '15 Not much has changed in 60 years, say the authors of a new book on school design - but that doesn’t mean we don’t have important lessons to learn During our research for Future Schools: Innovative Design for Existing and New Buildings (published this month) we had the rare luxury of reflecting on recently built, remodelled and refurbished schools, and also on the historical relationship between education and school design. But what does that experience tell us about where school design is headed? One of our conclusions is that, collectively, we need to be better at evidencing what works and reminding those in government that there is a rich history to draw on when planning for the future. When we compare many new school buildings with 19th- and 20th-century models the similarities are more apparent than the differences. Although technologies and teaching methods within schools have changed dramatically, the buildings themselves are very familiar. The Department for Education’s Building Bulletin 103, published in 2014, lists exactly the same categories of school spaces as the first Building Bulletins more than 60 years ago – classrooms, laboratories, workshops, halls, dining areas, offices, storage, circulation and so on. Moreover, the balance of space allocated to these different functions remains virtually identical. It would be reasonable to speculate then that schools are unlikely to change dramatically over the next decade. So should we go for a “standardised approach” to school design if we know what is needed? The dilemma with standardisation is that new school buildings are intended to last for 40-plus years and over that time some change is inevitable. Even in the short term we have seen how the impact of new technologies, fluctuations in pupil populations, and policies such as free school meals for infants have put pressure on existing learning spaces. One of the risks of the current emphasis on driving down capital costs is the potential loss of adaptability. What if today’s designs prove inflexible, unable to be adequately tweaked to meet changing requirements? Were this to happen, it would not be for the first time. The system-built schools of the 1950s and 1960s suffer the same repeated flaws, most notably with regard to their environmental performance and inappropriateness in a technology-intensive, energy-expensive, low-carbon future. It would make sense to concentrate less on standardisation and more on the processes known to make a huge difference on how schools are designed – appropriately funded procurement programmes, a well-thought-out brief which supports good communications between design team and client, and the application of new technologies and construction methods which deliver value for money.
A quick sweep of history suggests we currently find ourselves in a similar position to our predecessors in the post-war era, with the same challenges of needing to provide for a rising birth rate and to replenish the increasingly jaded building stock. Unlike our 1940s colleagues, though, we are not starting from scratch. If we look back in 10 years and it’s clear that we have been able to build quickly, robustly and cheaply without compromising.