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Getting down to the nitty-gritty

This article originally appeared on the Future Online website as part of the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) support programme.

In this article about Southfields Community College, headteacher Jacqueline Valin gives advice on how she keeps the plates spinning and maintains her enthusiasm for planning an innovative and exciting learning environment.

Should the toilets be segregated or mixed? Should the school entrance look like a hotel reception? How many computers per classroom? Should the corridors be one-way? How many car parking spaces should there be?

These are just a few of the 166 questions staff, pupils, parents and community members have responded to as Southfield Community College puts together its plans for BSF. Paul Maguire, the college’s facilities and finances manager, is now sifting through the 3,000 plus responses and analysing them on a spreadsheet. But there are not too many surprises. This is because the south London college has, at every step of the way, informed and consulted the whole school community on its plans to create a teaching and learning environment for the 21st century.

BSF output specification

The form, devised by the school’s technical advisers Faber and Maunsell and fine-tuned by Paul Maguire, is known as the BSF output specification. It follows a 113-question design quality indicators (DQI) form. Both are used to record and find consensus among the stakeholders on the project.

They will then be used throughout the design process to make sure that aspirations are being met, and are vital documents during the tendering process for the building work. Eventually they will be used to evaluate the project when it is complete.

The DQI form is divided into three sections: functionality, build quality and impact. It is set out so that the school must prioritise a number of considerations into the categories “required”, “desired” and “inspired”.

  • Statements under the rubric of functionality include: “The building should provide good access for everyone”; “areas for staff should be sufficient to allow for preparation, administration and relaxation”; and “the school grounds should provide a safe and stimulating environment for children”.
  • Under Build Quality, consideration is given to whether the “building should be easy to clean”, “the engineering systems easy to operate” and that “climate change should be considered in the design”.
  • Under Impact, the relative importance of whether the building “should reduce stress for users”, “make you think” and “have good acoustics” have to be ranked.

Jacqueline Valin is head of Southfields. It is a 1,400-pupil comprehensive and the majority of its intake comes from disadvantaged backgrounds. The site also encompasses a nursery, sports and adult learning centres, and as a full service extended college it is open every day of the year. The school has a unit for hearing impaired children and a speech and language centre. These many functions are housed in a mishmash of prefabs and buildings dating variously from Victorian times to the 1950s and 1960s.

As the BSF process unfolds, Jacqueline said it was vital that schools cleaved to the original vision set out in their strategy for change document agreed with the local authority, in their case Wandsworth. She said: “You need to stick to your core aim, which is to improve standards, and not be sidetracked by the designers. But it is a very exciting opportunity. Christine Gilbert, the chief inspector, said she wanted to see fewer boring lessons. Well, BSF offers the opportunity to provide more exciting and innovative learning environments in the vast majority of schools.”

It is a long process. While Southfields may have to wait until next year or even 2011 before the first brick is laid, Jacqueline and Paul Maguire agree that they are all learning a lot along the way. “We are beyond the early days of blue-skies thinking,” said Paul. “The staff is now aware that space costs money and they are thinking logically about it and making more realistic demands. They are beginning to manage their space and are being more inventive in how they use it. They still have high expectations but now we are getting to the finer details and working out our priorities."

"The different departments are thinking really hard about how they relate and how, in terms of space, they link up. And because the staff has been consulted and involved from day one, they know that their opinions and views are valued.”

The school has rearranged its senior management team to give Jacqueline time to project-manage Southfield’s BSF programme. The school’s governing body agreed to allocate £100,000 over three years to support the management team. Paul Maguire said: “You need someone who is clearly in charge of the programme. It needs constant drive, enthusiasm and vision and someone who can assimilate all the data and ideas. Jackie is excellent at that.”

That does not mean that Jacqueline does everything herself. She has put together a core team dedicated to the project, but also involves other staff where appropriate. When the local authority arranged meetings with and visits to a variety of schools that have already being involved in BSF, she encouraged other members of staff to attend. Her head of vocational technology went to a school which was showcasing design and technology and a science advanced skills teacher went to a school with innovative science facilities.

Change management strategy

Jacqueline is one of the National College consultant heads and has given a number of presentations to headteachers on her experience of BSF. She said schools had been most interested Southfields’s change management strategy and she has a set of colourful charts explaining how it works. She said: “You have to go into BSF with an open mind initially and then nail down your vision. You can learn a lot by talking to other heads. For example a head in one school said that they had gone for break-out spaces for IT, but in that challenging school it had not been as successful as he had hoped. That has made me think again.”

The BSF team will be using the detailed questions and responses of the output specification to structure their discussions during the term. It involves resolving questions such as “What is the purpose of the library” to where lockers should be sited, how the science labs should be organised and whether different teaching areas should be colour-coded.

Once these discussions are complete, Jacqueline should be able put together for the local authority the next stage, which is the outline business case, a detailed account of what is achievable and affordable. “You have to keep all the plates spinning, making sure they are all at the same speed and flick on new ones as we go along,” she said.

Tips for staying on course

  • Consult and inform your staff, pupils, parents at all stages. Southfields sent out 5,000 booklets describing the project to the school’s community.
  • Do regular questionnaires with staff and pupils, so that you are not surprised at their response to the DQI and output specification.
  • Have a core team to drive forward BSF at all its stages.
  • Talk to other heads and schools about their experience with BSF.
  • Do not let the designers distract you from the standards agenda.

Further information