Cool schools

With high-tech equipment and cutting edge designs, 21st-century schools look set to be exciting places to learn. Jo Reeves reports on the student-savvy, environmentally friendly buildings that Skanska is shaping.

It’s quite a challenge – to rebuild or upgrade all of England’s secondary schools over the next 10-15 years. But that’s the task the government set itself when it launched Building Schools for the Future in 2005. The aim is to boost learning by redesigning schools for modern-day students. And it’s to be done through innovative, long-term partnerships between the public and private sectors.

Skanska is one of the big names in construction that’s working in partnership with the government to deliver the programme’s first pioneering schools – in Bristol. It’s a city where, despite regeneration in the centre, there is serious deprivation in some areas. In 2005, for example, more young people left school there with little or nothing to show for it than anywhere else in the country. Through a 25-year private finance initiative contract, Skanska is starting by transforming four schools in the city over the next ten years. And they’re all to have a unique focus on sustainability.

The first steps are to use green construction and energy systems. Constructed from at least 12% recycled materials, including blockwork and concrete, along with the metal frame, roof and façade, the schools meet the Building Research Establishment’s ‘very good’ standards. James Macmillan, environment manager for Skanska Bristol Schools, adds: “All the buildings we have built and refurbished contain biomass boilers which use woodchips for heating.”

“Visual reminders like plasma screens displaying energy and water usage mean students start to understand their building.”

Yet he points out that “the emphasis is not only on sustainability, but on student learning”. Take the toilets for example. Skanska is planning to install grey water recycling systems, using roof run-off to flush toilets. And it’s fitting visibility panels so students can see how the systems work. “The aim is for teachers to incorporate the operation of the building into the curriculum,” he explains. “We want the students to be aware of their own environment. Visual reminders like plasma screens displaying energy and water usage mean they can start to understand their building.”

The buildings have been designed to be as student-friendly as possible. Again, the design of the toilets is key. When Macmillan himself held briefing sessions with 4,600 students, a point that particularly struck him was how many pupils were concerned about bullying, saying that this happened mostly in the toilets. That’s why the wash areas in Skanska’s designs are communal – leaving fewer secluded areas for this to go undetected. The thinking behind making the schools ‘cashless’ is similar. Rather than carrying money, students have money-charged key cards instead.

The first completed transformation will be the Bristol Brunel Academy (previously known as Speedwell Technology College) – in time for the autumn term in September. With an attached leisure centre open to the public too, offering a dance studio, fitness suite and changing rooms, the idea is that the school buildings become a community resource.

“It is very exciting seeing the faces of the students and teachers when they stand in their new classrooms,” enthuses Macmillan. “One community representative was in tears – they had been waiting 17 years for their new school.”

21 June 2007