While other countries recognize the benefits top-class educational facilities, the UK is looking for quick saves at the expense of the future

The sheer scale and ambition of the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) investment programme promised the advent of world-class facilities for UK education.

As an architects practice that designs leading academic facilities across several continents, we at Woods Bagot were pleased to see the potential for progress and the realisation in the UK that world-class facilities are the best foundation for a world-class education sector.

We were greatly disheartened, therefore, by the comments from coalition Government minister Philip Hammond in regards to the future of not only BSF, but design standards in general for the education sector.

His views are worryingly misplaced. While ‘shiny’ and ‘sparkly’ design (his words) certainly isn’t the answer – and no one within the architectural profession would ever say it was – well-designed school environments are a critical component of any world-class education system.

The education system in many counties is clearly failing. In some local authorities more than 50 per cent of pupils leave school with little demonstrable benefit and are ill-equipped to deal with the future.

As we move further into the 21st century, young people need to learn in many different ways. The outdated 19thcentury classroom arrangements that many pupils still learn in were designed for a national manufacturing economy – they are now largely outmoded and irrelevant.

New environments, which are flexible and rich in ICT technology, are fundamental to moving us towards a modern, knowledge-based economy and having the school leavers to work within it.

Much of the world’s educational built infrastructure was constructed during the baby-boomer years of the Sixties and Seventies. It has now well and truly reached its use-by date and needs to be renewed to support other educational technology elements effectively.

The educational support infrastructure has to include all learning technologies, of which buildings are an essential part. ICT lifecycles are two to three years; for audio/visual technology, perhaps five to seven years; fittings and equipment seven to 10 years; engineering services 20 years, and buildings 50 years.

The new Government’s decision will, quite simply, put the UK further behind other first-world economies in the competitive knowledge economy and will only increase the backlog of deferred essential maintenance, not to mention the needed change of use to meet 21stcentury learning requirements.

While other countries – Australia, Japan, South Korea and the USA – are researching the impact of the physical environment on learning outcomes, the UK will stay firmly rooted in the 19th century for another generation and, accordingly, see its global competitive advantage inevitably dwindle.

At Woods Bagot, we work on education projects in Asia, the Middle East and Australasia, where education stakeholders have recognised that educational built infrastructure constructed 30 years ago is increasingly obsolete and needs to be renewed to support the other educational technology elements effectively.

There is growing concern in the UK that the projects that have survived this latest cull will have further financial strictures suffered upon them.

In a recent debate in the House of Lords, the issue of design standards for these remaining projects was raised. The overriding consensus was that standards must be maintained even in the face of substantial cost cutting.

Indeed, if the debate comes down to how cheaply you can deliver square footage then this is a problem in itself and misses the fundamental issue at stake: that the reason we are rebuilding schools is to create a flexible education system for our young people.

To use the example of projects that the education team at Woods Bagot has witnessed first-hand, I would highlight examples from both Qatar and Hong Kong.

In the first instance we have worked on the ambitious Qatar Science and Technology Park (QSTP) in Doha. This project was the result of the Qatari authorities recognising the need to ensure the education of its younger generations, and the development of a knowledge economy that will outlast the petro-dollars that currently support Qatari infrastructure.

The premise is simple – build world-class education facilities to attract the world’s leading education establishments, such as Weill Cornell Medical College, Carnegie Mellon University and Georgetown University. Place it adjacent to the QSTP, which hosts the world’s leading blue-chip companies – Siemens, Chevron and Cisco, to name a few – and watch the benefits as top-class education profits from link-ups with the world’s leading private-sector firms.

Undoubtedly, the project is founded on the boundless wealth that large-scale oil production offers, but it accommodates a long-term vision and ambition that we certainly lack in the UK.

The Australian Science and Mathematics School in South Australia is another example of the lengths to which other leading world economies are going to ensure their position in the ‘race for knowledge’.

The buildings were conceived to break away from the traditional concepts of classrooms and labs. These have been replaced by ‘learning commons’ and ‘learning studios’. The school is designed to incorporate large, central, common spaces for circulation, breakout learning, and studios for formal and informal learning, displays, exhibitions, assemblies and conferences.

More than anything, it is a flexible learning space. The spaces are designed to be student rather than teacher-centred to foster collaboration, and to recognise the modern focus on collaborative learning.

The dated facilities that the vast majority of UK schools consist of can barely accommodate the number of pupils they now host let alone provide the flexibility that modern education demands both in terms of space and technological demands.

Only a few years ago, we were heading towards a brighter future for both teachers and students with more innovative designs in learning environments. Sadly for the UK, while the rest of the world marches on apace, this bright future has become a dim reality that presents a threat not only to the education of the current generation but has wider implications to the entire economy.

James Berry Is principal at Woods Bagot. He has worked in the education sector for more than 20 years, and was shortly to begin work on the Kent BSF project

This article was first published in FX Magazine.