The news has been full of stories about Free Schools recently. We have seen stories that concentrate on parent power and the freedom to set their own curriculum, and in contrast we have seen stories concentrating on how shops such as Woolworths and other buildings will be converted to house these schools.
But what has been missing is how these relate to each other.
For the last few years the BCSE have run study tours to Sweden and had conversations with architect, Kenneth Gardestad, from Kunskappskolan about the possibilities of the power of the old informing the new. An old submarine factory as a school? An old light bulb factory? These are successful industrial production spaces that have been transformed into learning spaces.But the reason these spaces work as schools is because the curriculum is perfectly matched to the spaces available. It really isn’t corridors and chicken crates, it’s thinking about children and their teachers with a new respect. And when you are doing this you can’t always get it on the cheap.
Free schools and the spaces they will occupy are not just new ‘old’ schools. Often the sites being looked at for Free Schools are restricted and limited by previous use. Adaptive reuse does demand challenging the ways you do things; you can’t do things the way you’ve always done them. That means using spaces for teaching and learning in different ways. Social spaces become much more of a learning space and private study space becomes much more important. Colour needs to be used to uplift and stimulate and be used in much more mature ways than the cartoon colours that adults think young people like. Importantly we must ask the teachers ‘How do you work best and where?’
It also means looking at what happens on school sites and the implications on management and safety. Whether it is office reuse, high street or out-of-town retail space, we MUST aim for decent environments. They don’t need to be grandiose but they do need to work for a new generation of teachers and learners. We expect our office space to work with us so why do we deny our learners the same opportunity? Good light, proper air, acoustics with ease, furniture that doesn’t hurt your back and technologies you can fit and forget.
Be practical when choosing the building for a Free School. Ask yourself this question: Can this building serve the needs of teachers and young people? And don’t forget some buildings are as particular as people.
In all the furore of the debate its important to remember: Decent school environments matter
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[...] The whole Free School programme has continued to grab headlines, and one of the immoveable objects that they are confronting has been the difficulty in finding suitable sites. [...]