Wanted - 100,000 School Places

Students will have to work harder in overcrowded classrooms if changes aren't made - image from _space group.

Recent research has revealed that England is facing an acute shortage in the number of school places, with more than 1 in 10 pupils in the country in schools suffering from overcrowding.

The suggestion is that the government will need to build a total of more than 100,000 places at primary and secondary schools, at a cost of up to £2bn. 50,000 of these places are required just to alleviate overcrowding, while the other 50,000 are places that local government officials have estimated will be needed to prevent the spread of overcrowding.

This overcrowding is driven by attempts by Local Authorities to cope with the lack of good schools in their boundaries. Popular schools are being allowed to grow beyond their buildings’ limits, so that as many families as possible get a place at their first choice institution. This means that already full schools will be unable to expand to meet demand as pupil places continue to rise, and larger shares of children will need to take up places at less successful schools.

Not only could a lack of classrooms force schools to increase class sizes, it also threatens to undermine the government’s plans to boost competition in education, which appears to depend on spare capacity for children to move between schools.

Currently, more than ¾ million children, 12% of the total in Local Authority schools, are in buildings that are more than 4% over the capacity for which they were designed. Among these children, more than 250,000 are in schools that are 10% over the limits of their facilities, while over 60,000 are in schools that have 20% more students than their buildings are intended for.

Considering that the amount of four year olds is set to rise by 8% over the next two years, this issue will only get worse, and in order to prevent overcrowding, Local Authorities will need to find another 25,000 new primary school places, with similar numbers for secondary schools required by 2014/15.

These growth numbers will be problem for a new education secretary who is planning wide-ranging reforms. His reforms are intended to increase the competition among schools. However this relies on a margin of spare capacity and new link choices to be made.

Apparently the school places crunch is not evenly distributed with London suffering particularly badly. The previous government had identified indentified investment for Local Authorities facing the shortage of primary school places and Building Schools for the Future was intended to be the long term answer to this issue.

Obviously, there was a bit of political too-ing and fro-ing on this issue, however there can be no doubt that the overcrowding is increasing and that this is likely to be a political timebomb. Clearly, there needs to be a stand back in relation to education building provision and how this aligns with ambitions, policy and performance of schools.

Rob

Photos from the TES Classroom of the Future...

For more images taken at the event, visit the _space life Facebook page by clicking HERE.

Poles apart

I am just returning on the train from two days spent at the Times Education Supplement exhibition at Olympia. We were asked by the organisers if we would support them in presenting the classroom of the future at their event. We were provided with 65 square metres in which to build the futuristic space.

I agreed to support TES as this was not the normal type of event we would attend and it was attended by teachers rather than designer and builders. These would include BESEC for example.

This event was very much attended by the users of our buildings. The exhibition would give us the chance to test some of our thoughts on the teaching profession. Our thinking in relation to learning environments has be driven by our own beliefs, research and guidance issued by the government. Our classroom of the future or learnspace as we like to refer to it is a flexible diverse and adaptable space. I believe the classrooms of the future will be heavily influenced by IT and furniture. In a single space we have tried to allow the ability for several activities to be carried in a single period. The activities could include create, investigate, communicate, generate, educate, collaborate and integrate.

Much of this is already adopted in the way primary children are taught. They use group working and project based learning. Their furniture is flexible and they sit on the floor or even outside. At secondary school everything changes. We use 56 square metre rooms with 30 seats and desks all facing the front where knowledge will be imparted.

What has been interesting from the exhibition has been the reticence from the teaching profession. I initially thought the issues were about fear of the IT. However I think the issues are deeper. The teachers seemed to feel by having a class broken down into small groups it would be too hard to manage and they wouldn’t have the time to control the students.

There is without doubt two very polarised camps. The design and construction industry seem to have aligned with the government and PfS in delivering new schools. At the conferences supporting this camp there are very few teachers. On the other side there are the teachers who have their own defined view. At present never the two shall meet.

We can't continue to design and deliver schools and spend all of this money and not engage and embrace the profession who will be working in them. The BSF programme is about transformation but at the moment we are delivering schools without the teaching practices aligned. We need to get an understanding from both sides and see how we can move forward together. We mustn’t forget the driver for this investment is to improve the futures of our children. Until we move away from the pressures of delivering grades there will not be the space to update how our teachers teach and our learners learn.

Classroom of the future

A 3D of our TES 'Classroom of the Future'

I'm on way down to the TES (Times Education supplement) exhibition in Olympia in London today. This is a 2 day gather of a wide range of the teaching profession. We are showcasing learnspace which is our classroom of the future. We have a 65 sqm space which we have set up as a space which could be the classroom of the future.

We believe spaces need to be flexible, adaptable and diverse to suit a whole range of learning approaches. We have an IT partner who is showcasing the latest technology. We will have everything from large format screens for sharing information to itouch for personal information.

We have a couple of furniture partners who range from the specialist fixed furniture through to loose furniture. Ergonomics are forgotten in a learn space and need to be given more consideration in the future. This should be an exciting couple of days.