Building Schools for the Future: Implications for Design and Technology
June 2009
John Chidgey
Partnership for Schools (P4S) - the non-government department responsible for the Building Schools for the Future programme has announced that there will be more new and refurbished secondary schools, including academies, opening in England in the next 20 years since the 1960s.
This announcement, along with the BSF programme already well established in more than half of all local authorities in England means that all 3,500 Design and Technology departments are likely to be affected. The programme began with the opening of a wave 1 school, the Brunel Academy, Bristol in September 2008. The subsequent rollout, although already behind schedule due to procurement issues, offers a ‘transformational education’ for young people across the country. This is unprecedented and nothing short of a lifetime opportunity to make statements, both visually and practically, about how Design and Technology can, and should, contribute to the future of education.
Attempting to establish exactly what a ‘transformed’ experience for young people in Design and Technology over the next 5, 10 or 20 years should entail is an issue of the utmost importance for the D&T community. Developing a vision statement for D&T is a challenge for any well informed department. In the short to medium timescale an outstanding or good Self Evaluation Form (SEF) and Improvement Plan are considered essential, but long term, knowledge and understanding of the implications of curriculum changes for teaching and learning will be necessary to inform future design scenarios.
Schools, academies and local authorities on the BSF programme wave 5 and beyond are expected to produce a vision or Strategy for Change document. These documents should inform P4S how a transformed school will meet the needs of (and add value to) the educational experience of young people in the future. The stakeholder groups in these schools who (rather than the Headteacher) drive this agenda can justifiably request similar vision statements from identified learning areas and/or subject adjacencies, including D&T.
The subject leader of a D&T department needs to be a member of the schools’ stakeholder groups in order to champion the changes, and should establish the number of anticipated ‘classroom’ spaces required to realise the overall vision for D&T. The key message here is early intervention and participation.
Design and Technology Subject Associations and the D&T community in general should be concerned about the lack of involvement in the design of new subject learning environments integral to BSF and other new school build projects under Private Finance Initiatives. Recent evidence would suggest that whilst there are improvements in many whole school features, there is only limited progress being made in the learning environments related to Design and Technology and its associated vocational subjects.
As mentioned earlier in this paper, it is important to engage members of a D&T department in long term thinking and planning for future accommodation requirements. This should prepare them for the inevitable debate they must have on ‘transforming’ Design and Technology. The debate should focus on learning and the curriculum – not equipment or furniture at this stage of the process. Subject leaders should contact the D&T subject associations for further advice as soon as they are aware of BSF meetings in their school. They should also be members of an in-house stakeholder group to argue for D&T’s physical setting. They may discover that the numbers of ‘learning spaces’ in revised accommodation schedules allocated to their subject area are reduced, and they must be aware of the changes anticipated for the role of teachers of Design and Technology.
D&T has the additional design complication of linking its curriculum needs with those for the associated vocational opportunities and diplomas for engineering, manufacturing, construction and catering which are developing rapidly but without any strategic planning on joint accommodation and resources.
The National Association of Inspectors and Advisers in Design and Technology (NAAIDT) has produced Guideline No 23 ‘Transforming D&T’ which offers some ‘lessons learned’ and suggestions on accommodation matters. The NAAIDT is also currently training its members as accommodation consultants who can give advice to local authorities and BSF project managers on more detailed arrangements and the layout of ‘Product Design Suites’ and vocational areas. Research and Development is exceedingly short in this area and, sadly, D&T as an important contributor to education has not to date had access to the resources enjoyed by some other areas of the curriculum. Project Farady, for example, commissioned by the DCSF in December 2006 is a major research and design project set up to rethink radically how Science is taught in schools and to develop exemplar designs. Similarly, Physical Education and School Sport is high on the national agenda and commands a high profile in BSF, as does Information and Communication Technologies. Where is D&T in this?
In the mid 1990s when the Specialist Schools Programme was launched, funding was initially only available for aspiring Technology Colleges (a combination of D&T, Science, Maths and ICT). Currently about 80% (2,993) of all secondary schools are specialist schools (plus 83 academies) across a range of subject areas and nearly 600 (20%) of these are designated as Technology Colleges. This represents a far greater number than any other specialism and many of these Colleges have since become largely D&T focused as other subject areas have gained separate subject designation. The BSF initiative expects the D&T Community to ‘transform’ and apply to future generations these developments founded on the past 20 years of progress in young people’s education – yet to try and do this without the necessary groundwork being carried out by our subject specialists will be futile.
The limited (but significant) evidence to date shows that new classrooms and some specialist subject area workshops in the BSF programme are simply ‘more of the same’ and not visionary as the programme’s criteria expects them to be. Building Bulletins are sometimes being used too prescriptively, not as guide as intended, and without the essential provision of the subject expertise which our D&T associations and specialists can provide.
In 2004 the then Department for Education and Skills (DFES) commissioned a working group of D&T specialists, led by HMI Mike Ive (retired), to produce Building Bulletin 81 ‘ Design and Technology Accommodation in Secondary Schools – A Design Guide’. This has been a useful guide for the subject but is now in urgent need of an update along with other supporting materials. A further complication here is that (in my experience) many of the architects and other specialists employed to give BSF related advice to schools are familiar with Building Bulletin 98 the ‘Briefing Framework for Secondary School Projects’ (a revision of BB82: Area Guideline for Schools – Secondary Section), but are not aware of BB81 even though there are references to it in the BB98.
The two subject associations NAAIDT and D&TA are keen to support and give advice to organisations and local authorities that are determined to provide our young people with better schools to meet their future needs, not simply better buildings. It is not too late to be better prepared for this once-in-a-lifetime challenge, but mistakes and poor design of Design and Technology suites are occurring on a regular basis. This trend will continue until a research and development programme is initiated and funded by the government department responsible for the future of our children’s education in our country, and P4S recognises their obligation to provide to local authorities and other employers specialist subject advice in Design and Technology and its vocational counterparts.