Schools design quality: A user perspective

The Building Schools for the Future was launched by the Government in 2004. The aim of the programme was, under the last Labour Government, to rebuild or renew every secondary school in England by 2020. It represented the biggest capital investment in schools since the 1960s and was designed to explicitly integrate the design quality of schools with the quality of education. It was therefore of the utmost importance for architects, and the construction industry as a whole, to design buildings that were fit for their purpose as 21st century learning environments. Doubts were raised particularly by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE), in 2006, about whether the quality of these new schools met the educational aspirations of then Government. It was speculated that some of these new schools lacked the inspiring, innovative and flexible spaces the Labour Government was aiming for, leaving a concern that many of these new schools would exhibit the same problems as the schools that they have replaced. Hence, it was the aim of this study to understand the successes and failures of the Building Schools for the Future programme since the CABE review, with regard to the quality of design in recently completed secondary schools. This was undertaken principally through a questionnaire survey of schools completed between 2006 and 2009. Analysis of the data indicated that there are improvements on some aspects of design quality. Particularly there are improvements in relation to building envelope, public presence, circulation patterns, acoustic, lighting and ventilation strategies. However, the issues of inadequacy of resilient materials specification and a lack of storage are still unresolved.