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Creating a vision for your capital investment project

Creating a vision for your capital investment project

The purpose of creating a vision is to describe the future that you wish to create. When your aspirations are expressed in a clear and compelling way, your vision statement - how you describe that future - can be very powerful in communicating your intentions with the wider community and wider world.

Your vision also provides the underpinning conceptual framework for the development of your strategy. It examines the key components that schools need to address in articulating the detail of their vision for the future and in describing a clear picture of what education will look like post-build.

Schools that have achieved this most successfully have been rigorous in asking themselves where they are now, where they want to be and what they need to do in order to get there. They will have started thinking through the implications of the vision in practice, have a clear sense of how learning will be different and what it will mean for all those involved having explored range of issues including the curriculum, leadership, inclusion and special educational needs (SEN).

A vision that clearly defines a desired future is a guide for strategic decision making and should determine the day-to-day operational decisions and behaviours of all who share and understand it. A vision will also form the basis for your design brief and will be interpreted by architects and designers who will work with you throughout the process to ensure that the building work supports the delivery of the vision.

The process of developing a school’s vision should involve:

  • taking stock of current achievements and challenges
  • identifying core values and guiding principles
  • researching innovative developments and reflecting on the needs of learners now and in the future
  • thinking about ways in which learning and provision for the wider community can be improved – perhaps involving visits to examples of extended schools
  • developing strategies to remove barriers to learning and achievement
  • considering how design and space can be used more creatively to improve learning and achievement
  • working together as a school community, and with other schools and key stakeholders to plan to improve the range and quality of provision

While working towards your vision it may be helpful to consider these questions. To what extent does our vision address:

  • our own school context and challenges?
  • our local community priorities?
  • our local authority’s vision?
  • changes in new technology?
  • global and environmental changes?
  • identify the most important ideas to address the schools challenges?
  • how you are going to do differently to transform learning and achievements?
  • how learning, outcomes and school practices will be different from the present?
  • will the new and refurbished buildings be inspirational, flexible, sustainable and adaptable?
  • does our vision become more of a resource for our local community?

Relevant resources

Practical tools

Self-evaluation

Our self-evaluation tool explores the key aspects of the capital investment processes that schools need to engage with in order to develop their vision for learning and associated educational brief. It has been written to help leadership teams make valid judgements about where they are as they enter and progress through a project, whether remodelling or rebuilding. There are accompanying guidance notes and a record sheet:

Key ideas

This interactive tool will help you think about what you want your new learning environment to look like. Divided into primary, secondary and special educational needs and disability (SEND), it contains lots of ideas which you can sort into what you would like to do, what you are already doing, what you should be doing and what you do not want to do.

You can also download the key ideas for primary and secondary schools - these versions include more detail about each idea and links to further information and examples.

Vision statement

Step-by-step guidance on how to put together a vision statement, taking you from an outline comprising a number of headlines or key ideas through to considering the consequences of these and finally to more detailed writing on the implications of the vision.

Managing change

The Bridge Change Leadership Framework provides support in the leadership of transformational change, enabling you to both diagnose your current situation and plan action to address areas needing attention. This handbook is for those who have already been introduced to the model and would like to gain a greater depth of understanding of the main components or would like to introduce the model to others.

Articles

Inspirational articles from Future Online to help you formulate your own vision.

  • Deep learning in the 21st century - interview with Esme Capp about the transformation of Wooranna Park Primary School in Australia
  • Getting down to the nitty-gritty -interview with the headteacher of Southfields Community College about how she is managing the creation of an innovative and exciting new learning environment
  • Hands-on ICT for hands-off learning - explores how Robin Hood Primary School in Birmingham has remodelled its old premises in an innovative way to enable a new approach to learning and teaching, with an empahsis on ICT
  • Primary colour green - how one head's vision of a fully sustainable primary school is about to become reality
  • Engage me! - video created by pupil's at Robin Hood School in Birmingham about learning in the 21st century from their perspective

Case studies

Find out how others have gone about rebuilding or remodelling their school. Many of the case studies include a video.