It's the inside story that matters

The Building Schools for the Future programme is about more than light and space; it's also about the delivery of learning

By Tim Rudd

Recent years of huge funding for capital projects under the Building Schools for the Future programme (BSF) have been a Golden Age, a unique opportunity to redesign schools as engaging learning spaces and accessible community centres.

But whatever happens in the General Election, it’s an age now under threat, with some tough questions about the impact of the £55 billion scheme. What has been the impact from this investment, the largest in UK education for the past 50 years? Will it really matter if schemes are scrapped?

The argument is clear for some. Paul Finch, the new chairman of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE), claims that cuts to the programme will harm the prospects of “millions” of young people. Low standard, depressing buildings lead to low morale and lack of motivation for pupils and teachers, he says. He also points to the inequalities that will result from a scaling down of work, with a third of local authorities yet to have benefited from BSF.

It’s hard to argue with the idea that a high-quality, well-designed and modern environment is likely to be conducive to improving attitudes to school. However, assessing impacts is fraught with complexities and there is a need to avoid over-simplified accounts based on measures that may not account for all of the aims of the programme and the visions of individual schools.

What we can be more certain about is the progress of the BSF programme so far, and what it has meant for young people now and in the future. The boom period has delivered buildings with better light and space, the pervasive communal atrium, with investment in wi-fi and ICT suites.

Although the physical appearance and style of some schools may have changed, in general most are still set out along traditional lines with existing pedagogical practice informing design echoing the Victorian era. With a few notable exceptions, the approach to learning, with pupils going to classrooms in a fixed building at fixed times each day, sitting in rows at desks facing a teacher, still appears to dominate.

If there is an issue of return on investment, it is not around whether schools now look different but whether they are different. Surely investment on this scale deserves to lead to fundamental and lasting change in how schools deliver learning and education.

Despite initiatives seeking to empower learners and place them at the heart of the learning process by giving them greater choice and voice, there has not been a fundamental shift in practice. We know that certain socio-technological changes are likely to mean that learning in society in general will continue to be more collaborative, with greater communication enabling working together across fixed geographical boundaries, and with niche markets and interests developing readily with a range of individuals and organisations.

The ability to find, store, create, edit and publish content will mean that learners will increasingly have to develop skills and competencies that put them in control of the learning process. They will also have to know how best to apply the various tools and mechanism to help them make sense of knowledge - yet we do not seem to be seeing notable changes in practice, nor are we seeing this reflected in design of learning spaces.

A survey by Futurelab of 2,900 school pupils found that 58 per cent had never heard of BSF or other programmes to build or redesign schools; 25 per cent had heard about them but didn’t know much else; and only 6.5 per cent knew exactly what these programme were and what they were for. Of those young people who had heard of BSF, 60 per cent had never been involved in activities relating to it or other similar initiatives and 25 per cent had been involved just once.

For real change to take place, it not only needs to be rooted in the culture of today and informed by the trends of tomorrow, but the specific concerns identified and articulated at a local level need to become embedded in daily practices and relationships.

For this reason, the route to a truly shared transformational vision - and then to achievable, measurable changes in practice - can only be through greater co-design with pupils. Seeing the various building programmes as learning experiences in themselves and as an opportunity to remodel educational practice, the form and function of individual schools should be at the heart of the process. This type of co-design could draw on research and successful practice, while engaging users and designers in a critical and challenging dialogue without shying away from issues of feasibility and accountability.

Most crucially, it would not only apply to the built environment, but also to what is meant to happen within it; the curriculum and the emerging relationships between learners, practitioners and the local community. The whole educational experience could then become a constructive dialogue, constantly drawing on ideas and issues that are fully owned and understood, rather than imposed through convoluted procurement and design strategies detached from the end-users’ actions, choices and priorities.

The central issues surrounding any policy around future learning spaces or schools has to be a better thought through consideration of the ways in which learning and teaching could, and indeed should change. Education needs to respond to all manner of social, cultural and technological changes that are likely to be accentuated in the near future. The failure to keep these issues at the heart of any debate diverts conversation away from the crucial consideration of what learning will or should be like. We must avoid creating spaces – and approaches to education - that are outdated and out of kilter with the outside world.

To find out more about this article, visit: http://www.futurelab.net/

27 March 2010

Tim Rudd. Senior researcher, Futurelab