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21st Century Schools: Learning Environments of the Future

21st Century Schools: Learning Environments of the Future
Library Shelf Location 08.BUIL
Publication Date 2004
Description Investment in new school buildings has been erratic since the great Victorian school building campaign and about every thirty or forty years we have looked at the existing stock and decided that it needed substantial investment to meet current needs. We are at present in the early stages of a new campaign that will see the majority of secondary school buildings replaced or substantially improved over the next 10-15 years. In particular the DfES Building Schools for the Future programme will direct funds towards this area where the most substantial problems within the education sector are seen to lie. Schools represent some of the most important of our civic buildings. Whilst there has been (and continues to be) much discussion around the issue of the Private Finance Initiative as a method of procurement, there are some complex issues about fitness for purpose of new school buildings that have potentially even wider implications. The collaboration between CABE and RIBA in the Building Futures group offered an opportunity to commission a project to consider the requirements that we might place on these buildings during their lifetime. It was decided that this work should focus on the secondary sector, as this was the area where greatest change could be foreseen. No doubt many of us have pet versions of the way that we would like to see schools deliver future educational strategies, but the reality seems likely to be complex and possibly varied with a range of different approaches many of which will be specific to their locality. It seems to me that this study has captured the emerging complexity of interlocking issues in a way that is original and illuminating. We cannot yet know what future scenarios will emerge, but the diversity is likely to be much greater than the almost formulaic approach to school organisation and buildings that has been prevalent during the early stages of the reconstruction campaign. This report voices some strong opinions and recommendations. Not everyone will agree with these, and some may find them challenging. Time will tell how many of them prove to be prescient, but in the meantime it is hoped this report will demonstrate that it may be hard to predict how our schools will be delivering teaching and learning even in ten years time. At the very least we need to be designing the school buildings of the future to be permissive rather than prescriptive - otherwise we could find ourselves having to embark on the next campaign of school building sooner than we would like.
Quantity 1
Pages 35
Format Report
Publisher Building Futures
Categories Education/Learning, Architecture (category)
Keyword Schools
Language English

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