Can a new school building directly impact academic results? Antonia Berry

Can a new school building directly impact academic results? Antonia Berry reflects on the widespread benefits of a major project

I recall sitting at the back of my Maths classroom, a typical angst-ridden teenager, etching some tortured declaration of love into the chipped wooden desk. I remember swinging on my cracked plastic tub chair paying little heed to Mr Needson’s trigonometry demonstration on the grubby whiteboard. The room is like all the others in the school – fit for purpose (just). It can house thirty or so desks. The décor is tired but passable. A couple of ceiling tiles have slipped out of place. A collection of posters displaying ‘motivational’ quotes about the value of hard work are stuck to the walls with Blu Tack. At other points in the room, evidence of posters removed can be seen where the paint is stripped away to plaster in Blu Tack shaped splodges. Windows, stiff with age, are wedged open a crack where possible. The room is stuffy and hot and I am struggling to think of anything other than dreamy Richard Patterson in the year above me.

A couple of decades on and I am Depute Rector of St Columba’s School, one of the highest achieving schools in Scotland, watching from the front row the impact that a well-designed, well maintained teaching space has on the concentration, behaviour and learning of young people and wondering why some headteachers and LEAs of years gone by have failed to recognise this.

In the Independent sector particularly, the maintenance of school buildings, many often listed, can be a millstone

around the Board of Governors’ neck, a black hole into which money is sunk with few visible benefits to pupils. Committing to spending millions on the purchase and renovation of new buildings can be an even more daunting business: a tough sell to the parents on whom a capital levy will inevitably have to be placed; a challenging negotiation with local residents and neighbours; a long and time-consuming planning process. For many schools, significant investment in buildings and classroom design is a risk that is simply not worth taking, but for those who have the vision and the courage to commit to making that vision a reality, the reward for pupils and teachers can be immeasurable.

It is two years since St Columba’s opened its state-of-theart teaching facility, The Girdwood Building, named after the school’s last Rector, David Girdwood. It has been two years of teaching and learning in the thirteen new classrooms, of tailored pastoral care in the Guidance Suite, of quiet reflective reading and study in the new library, and it is time to consider whether it has all been worth it.

The School long ago purchased two detached Victorian houses that sat adjacent to the school grounds, Kilmorack and Cromdale (one slightly worse for wear), and employed Page\Park Architects in Glasgow to design a new School building that would fit seamlessly into the School campus and the beautiful stone-built village of Kilmacolm. Externally

the end result, completed by Burnett Bell Architects, is truly exquisite: Kilmorack and Cromdale have been preserved and restored, painted in brilliant white, with fringe details, such as bargeboards and door surrounds, decorated in slate grey. The two buildings, mirrored almost exactly, are connected by sandy coloured open brickwork and walls of glass. To the rear of each villa a collection of classrooms projects backwards, housed in the same glass and exposed brickwork exterior. From above, the shape is one of a giant angular horse shoe, softened by the green roof on the single storey new build which has a Sedum covering incorporating five types of moss.

Inside, the overwhelming effect is one of space and light created by the length (40 metres) and width of The Walk which serves as the spine of the building and which is supported by two large clerestory windows and floor-to-ceiling windows at intervals. Each classroom has a ‘teaching wall’, in which speakers are recessed, cabling hidden and all the pupils’ books and teachers’ marking shut away. Each classroom has a CO2 monitoring unit that informs the teacher of the air quality throughout the lesson. Ventilation can be controlled by opening the high clerestory windows through motorised openers operated at ground level. The teacher can control the light in the room through a versatile black-out blind system and dimmer switches, fitted as standard. In the Library, entirely open planned with no doors, an acoustic ceiling reflects an acoustic floor covering and the space is set off by a stunning ‘halo light’ effect. Hardwearing, high-end furniture has been selected in a soft-toned colour palette to match the soft furnishings in the rest of the building. A number of rooms share an acoustic wall which can be set back to bring two classrooms together into one larger teaching or event space that can seat eighty people.

The building houses the English Faculty, the Languages Faculty and Transitus – the top year of our Junior School, who enjoy the privilege of being early entrants to the Senior School. Each faculty is colour coded: English, for example, displays a series of nine portraits of writers selected by staff and pupils, in gilt frames on a brilliant royal blue wall (their faculty colour). Pupils contributed to the design of desks and the selection of colours used in bathrooms and public spaces and the images on the glass frosting of the changing room doors. Photographs of pupils in classrooms, on the sports fields or receiving their exam results are printed on large canvases and displayed in public areas. It is a space that celebrates achievement and demands the very best from those who use it.

And the pupils’ verdict? Harry Kellock in SV was explicit in talking about his ‘improved focus’ and he is not alone. Finlay Cooper in SVI, said he ‘feels like he can breathe. It is so spacious. I feel alert.’ Almost every pupil asked commented on the space and light and the impact this has had on their concentration levels. Hannah Findlater, SVI, explained how the building ‘almost feels as if it has changed the relationship between staff and pupils. There is a renewed sense of respect, not just for our surroundings but for each other.’ The reallocation of space has made the school feel much more cohesive. As Mark Connolly, SVI, commented, ‘The new layout and design has really given each department an identity. You feel as if when you take English or French you become an advocate or ambassador for that subject. You are proud to take it.’

In terms of academic achievement, it is difficult to establish a causal link between exam results and the effect of our new building; perhaps the fact that English and Languages were two of the highest achieving faculties this year is just coincidence. Or perhaps, just perhaps, the quality of the teaching and learning experience has been directly influenced by the quality of this extraordinary building design. Antonia Berry is Depute Rector at St Columba’s School