1. Why schools should collaborate through BSF?
Through Building Schools for the Future, we are currently being presented with an
opportunity to rebuild and invest in appropriate buildings, furniture, equipment and
technologies that has not occurred since the philanthropic investment of the
Victorian. The intent is to rebuild, remodel or refurbish the entire schools estate,
surpassing the post war and 1970s investments. There is a general consensus that
the investment in new schools of the 1950s and 1970s has not proved to be high
quality design from either an aesthetic, build quality or functional design perspective.
So how do we ensure that we don’t repeat the mistakes of the recent past? And
how do we create facilities that inspire young people and communities, are
comfortable and effective learning and teaching environments and are of sufficient
quality and robustness to leave a lasting legacy to future generations. At the core of
the current approach to investment and design is a collaboration between school
based practitioners and architects and designers. The belief being that it is the
creative partnership between educational professionals and technically expert
designers (both of buildings and ICT solutions) that will lead to high quality learning
environments in all senses of the word.
This approach, as described generically, would be hard to argue with. However
having worked on a number of Building Schools for the Future projects both as a
advisor to schools and Authorities and as a advisor to the private sector consortiums,
the practice of this approach on the ground seems to have some flaws.
In some cases an undue amount of influence is given to an individual or small
number of vocal educational practitioners, with strong, sometimes valid, but
frequently very specific views on the organisation and delivery of education. As such
the designs for the future school lock this particular view of educational delivery into
the infrastructure for the long term future of the environment, imposing a very
constrained legacy on subsequent leaders, teachers and learners inheriting this
facility.
In other cases, where influence is dispersed to large numbers of stakeholders, the
resources required to participate in the visioning, specification of requirement and
procurement of a partner can be prodigious. Time involved in consultation,
workshops and meetings takes away time and attention from the day to day job of
running a school and is therefore distracting time from school leadership,
management and improvement. Schools involved in Building Schools for the Future
investment programmes are frequently in challenging urban contexts. Where there
is good performance it is hard won and often fragile, and many schools are
struggling against poor performance. These are schools least able to divert time to
non urgent activities. Anecdotal evidence from one of the BSF schemes indicates
that a single school as dedicated over 3000 person hours to the BSF visioning, design
and procurement processes
The unintended consequence – where investment can lead to reduced
performance
Major school reorganisations while they involve significant investment in both
infrastructure and consultation, generally lead to reduced performance during the
process and recovery to prior performance levels can take a number of years to

2. achieve.
Staff turnover tends to increase during a process of capital build. This turnover can
strike at all staffing levels including leadership. While many heads survive the design
and construction process, they frequently feel burned out by the process and move
on soon after.
To engage or not engage? That is the question
If balanced and broad based consultation leads to a drain on resources, and if limited
targeted consultation leads to narrow and skewed views should the BSF programme
promote engagement at all. Would it not be better to develop a range of “expert”
professionals who through research, controlled innovation and targeted review and
evaluation develop deep expertise in the discipline of school design. After all we
don’t expect motorists to participate in the design of their cars, we don’t ask
shoppers to design their shopping centres or pilots and passengers to design airports
so why do we consult with teachers, student and community around the design of
their schools?
2 good reasons for engaging practitioners and learners in the design of a
new school.
As yet there does not appear to be a sufficient body of design professionals who are
expert in the design of school environments. There are few, if any, exemplar schools
in existence that solve for all the desires and requirements of 21st century learning
environments. We do have examples of excellent sustainability aspects within
schemes, we have examples of excellent specialist facilities (sports, science,
performance areas), we even have examples of schools with excellent community
and extended school facilities. Internationally we have examples of environments
that promote independent learning, environments that reflect different learning
styles and student preferences. However we do not have a single example where all
these elements come together in a single flexible, adaptable, functional, affordable
and beautiful solution. We are still in the process of innovating and creating new
and better design solutions. Therefore the combined skills of designers, practitioners
and learners are still needed to solve the problem. Engagement and participation in
some sense is unavoidable, research needs to be applied research involving those
who will learn and teach with the facilities.
Transformation of educational outcomes requires a transformation of behaviours and
attitudes, which will require a change in processes and classroom practices, which is
likely to change structures, scheduling and organisation within schools. The “new”
infrastructure needs to respond to the “new” ways of working and learning. The
design process has the potential to instigate and support these process and
behaviour changes.
The process of envisioning a new school allows people to explore new ideas, identify
and debate new ways of working and learning, to identify the potential benefits of
these changes and the required steps and efforts to make the change happen. It is
this thinking and planning process that is the first step in realising both school wide
and personal changes in behaviours and activities. It is the process of design,

3. induction and occupation of new facilities, as much as the facilities themselves, that
has the capacity to deliver changes in performance and outcomes.
So if engagement is essential if we are ever going to come close to designing the
exemplar schools for the future, and if participation in the design process has the
potential to deliver system wide benefits in terms of changing people’s attitudes,
behaviours and practices, the question becomes………..
How do we engage people effectively and affordably in the process of design,
without distracting from the day to day leadership, management and operation of a
school?
One solution is to provide additional resources to support the system through the
transformation phases. Back fill for teaching staff, school leaders and LA officers
engaged in the design and BSF processes. However central Government funding has
not been forthcoming to subsidise the efforts required to plan, develop and manage
the delivery of the capital programme. Local Authorities are required to divert funds
from other activities, schools are asked to absorb within their existing resources the
time required to participate (or LAs provide some additional cover funding to help
manage these activities).
Depending on your degree of cynicism and perception of national policy this can be
viewed in a number of ways:
The Government wish to stimulate the community, voluntary and private
sectors to take ownership of defining their vision for future school and to
engage in the debate
Central Government want to stimulate “joined up thinking” at a local
Authority level, in effective forcing LAs to manage BSF within other strategic
programmes for educational and community transformation
A means of encouraging collaboration between schools in order to reduce the
resource burden on any one school
A means of encouraging a debate at local level regarding the trade off of
capital investment verse spending on intangible training and change support
activities
Some additional resources are being provided in kind, in the form of free access to
advisory support from central procurement agencies such as P4S and 4Ps and some
support from DfES capital project units, CABE and other Voluntary Sector
organisations. Although in many cases this support can be interpreted as evaluation
and assessment rather then advice and guidance.
An alternative or addative approach is to minimise the burden of the consultation
process by delegating responsibility to a centralised decision making group, acting on
behalf of schools and communities. This group would be made up of a small number
of individuals with appropriate expertise and knowledge of Children’s Services, local
and community needs and technical design.
The benefits of this approach are that it: minimises the time burden on operational
functions of schools and LEA; draws on informed and experienced individuals with a
balanced and representative understanding of the processes and local need; and it
engages deep technical skills.

4. The risks or disadvantages of this approach are the lack of broad based involvement,
this can causes fear and mistrust in stakeholders; reduce the feeling of shared
accountability among the operational leaders and managers; and significant local
differences and needs may be missed.
This strategy is being used both successfully and unsuccessfully across a number of
BSF programmes. It is most likely to work where there is an established culture of
collaborative practice and delegated responsibility among a group of schools; where
the process is supported by good communications processes; and where a broader
base of stakeholders can engage and provide input on an ad hoc basis around
elements they feel strongly about.
The third type of approach would be to "chose an off the shelf" design. BSF
authorities could adopt an exemplar solutions based on prior schemes and proven
designs. In reality this approach will involve adapting standard designs, and or
having a constrained choice of “components” from which to build a design. The
“first” attempt to promote this approach through the DfES Exemplar Designs appears
to have taken a slightly different route. The Exemplars are generally considered to
be informative examples of certain leading edge educational and or technical design
principles, while not being replicable in terms of lifting the whole design solution.
There appears to be significant resistance to the “standardised” approach from both
the architectural and the educational community.
The benefits of this approach are the cost efficiency of “reusing” standard designs;
the proven nature of the technical solution; and the robustness of the functional
performance. The risks are that the “standard” solution does not meet all needs and
the process doesn't engage or involve the stakeholders. I would suggest the
optimum route in this vein is analogous to the "mass customisation" movement in
manufacturing - where component design and production are standardised but
assembly and configuration are highly customised i.e. schools can chose from a
limited menu of science clusters. This approach has more benefits on new build
schemes rather than remodelling projects.
Ultimately if we believe that participation is essential for ensuring functional and
motivational design of school and community facilities, then we need to develop
processes that draw on the benefits of all of the approaches described above. We
need to engage wide participation by stakeholders. But the activity needs to be
focused and valuable, giving tangible examples of design solutions and practical
scenarios that will feed debate and allow rapid decision making within realistic
financial and technical constraints.
For the system to invest adequate time and resources into giving students, staff,
community and the diverse range of service practitioners involved in the Every Child
Matters and Community Regeneration agendas a genuine voice in the Building
Schools (and Communities) for the Future the process needs to “kill more than 1 bird
with the same stone”. Engaging in the visioning, requirements, design and
execution processes must also contribute to the school improvement and
transformation agenda - specification of the requirements for buildings and ICT
become the bi-product of a wider process of people, process and organisation
change. The participation process becomes a collective approach to Imagineering
the future of how our communities and community services will work. Schools are a

5. component of this Community future but this investment needs to impact in the
widest possible agenda.
Some Tips to Manage the Resource Requirement
Freeing up Capacity within the existing system needs an informed and disciplined
approach. Authorities and schools need to find the time from somewhere to engage
in workshops, discussion and design sessions. Informed decision making with
respect to how and where “spare” time can be created needs data on how time is
currently deployed and where efficiencies can be made. This data on how staff
deploy time can then be analysed staff can compare differences between
departments and between schools and share ideas on how to be more efficient.
Examples of where time can be saved might include shared planning and preparation
of common curriculum resources within departments and or between schools; use of
automatic electronic marking for elements of assessment; use of digital resources to
support cover provision within libraries and learning recourse centres. Strategies for
releasing time must be identified and implemented BEFORE the BSF process is
initiated
The Voluntary Sector is active in the Design and Community Engagement areas.
Organisations such as School Works, CABE Education, the Design Council and RIBA
are all making tools and resources available to schools and Authorities for free.
Many of these tools can be embedded into curriculum related activities – therefore
contributing to rather than distracting from the learning and teaching agenda.
Some innovative Private Sector organisations are promoting the use of
collaboration to make processes more efficient – For example Blue Amber are
organising shared market testing days. Rather than individual Local Authorities
organising presentations to potential bidders for their BSF schemes; 4 or more
Authorities share a single event and bidders circulate between Authorities giving
feedback on the Visions and structure of the package or requirements.
We do not currently seem to have a consensus as to the key ingredients and
successful actualisation of a School for the Future. I therefore believe we need to
continue to engage a range of voices in the design process in order to develop an
appropriate solution. Design of schools should start with the questions “What do we
want our communities to be?”, “What do we want our children and young people to
be?” “How do we want to promote and provide support services within our
communities?”. The answers from the educational profession generally focus on
“young people and communities should have hope, high aspirations and self belief”,
“communities should be tolerant, curious and supportive”, “young people should be
skilled in communications and collaboration skills”, “communities should be
entrepreneurial, hard working and resilient”. Generally parents, communities,
employers and public agencies all agree. Where we need to invest the effort is
rethinking how the activities and services needed to deliver these come together to
create this future and last of all what are the facilities that we need to support this
vision.