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BUILDING EXCELLENCE CONFERENCE

Glasgow Science Centre
5th December 2007

The aim of this conference was to explore the implications of the Curriculum for Excellence for the building of schools. It would also see the launch of the Scottish Governmnet publication "Building Excellence". This interesting report is now online at: www.scotland.gov.uk/Resource/Doc/207034/0054999.pdf

Following a video welcome from Fiona Hyslop, the main pre-coffee business was chaired by Nick Barley, director of The Lighthouse. Dan McGinty of Learning and Teaching Scotland, (LTS) then spoke about progress in developing the Curriculum for Excellence and its four capacities: Successful Learners, Confident Individuals, Responsible Citizens and Effective Contributors. There is to be a long term transitional change with emphasis on active learning, making full use of new technologies and making sure that all pupils have access to these technologies. Subjects are to be far more interrelated with cross-cutting themes and priorities. He talked about experimentation and risk-taking to encourage pupils and teachers to work together; this would mean more support and challenges in CPD (Continual Professional Development) to develop these skills.

During the next year, LTS together with the Scottish Government and other partners will be involved with the next stages of the Curriculum for Excellence:
- they will publish a skills strategy
- there will be a phased release of the subject area learning experiences and outcomes
- a formal consultation will be sent out to all stakeholders to look at the S4 examination system
- LTS will lead on the roll out of "GLOW" (formerly the Scottish Schools Digital Network) which will provide online curriculum resources and the means to coordinate lessons between schools.

The conclusion was that buildings need to be more flexible and well-designed in order to support and not hinder new ways of learning and to be useful to the whole community.

Ian Smith from Learning Unlimited then gave a presentation entitled, "In Search of the Self-Motivating Classroom" in which he tried to define excellence and what methodologies would deliver it and how design would support it. The four capacities in the Curriculum for Excellence are the ultimate aim and so mean that teaching methods and classroom design must change. Ian Smith reviewed what we know about how we learn and that intelligence is not fixed. He quoted some important developments including Assessment is for Learning, collaborative learning, (much more exploratory and noisy!), "joyning" up learning and Alan McLean's work on the "motivated school".

Smith thought designers and others would need to think about:
- Non-fixed classrooms
- Desks that can be easily moved
- Teachers would usually work centrally with control over wall space to change between interactive teaching aids
- Secondary schools should be more like primaries with pupils seeing less teachers and studying fewer subjects
- Subjects would be more inter-connected, for example, science and social subjects
Smith suggested scrapping English and maths in favour of literacy and numeracy.
He concluded by saying that the problem for designers is that it is hard to predict what would be needed in twenty years time and that there is a danger of developing reforms that are only deliverable in modern buildings.

A questioner from the Design Council who had published an idea for the "360 degree classroom" (cited by Smith in his presentation), emphasized the need for well-designed furniture. One example of this would be pedestal chairs on wheels which would be easily moved and would free up more space by reducing the area needed for each individual. They suggested that the biggest false saving is the reuse of old furniture in newly-designed schools as they dictate layout and counteract the flexibility of space.

Les Watson, the ex-principal of Glasgow Caledonian University then spoke about how, in the past designers have tended to concentrate on architecture rather than functionality. He talked about how the environment and buildings can drive educational change and how important it is to be able to talk to people alongside you as you work and learn. He suggested that the current curricular structure gives us passive learners and that to achieve the "four capacities" we need to shift to more instrinsic motivation and more active, lifelong learning that is more entrepreneurial in character. Watson talked about design that enabled more "flow experiences" where tasks are matched to skills. He went on to describe the ways in which young learners are using technology such as shotcodes, (circular barcodes) in magazines, museums and other places to pick up links via mobile phone cameras that leads them to websites which could help them to share papers, provide information and allow to write blogs.

We then moved onto a presentation by a team from West Lothian Council who are experiencing a housing boom and need three new secondaries and seventeen new primary streams, which are to be fully or partly developer-funded. They had reviewed the HMIe quality indicators on accommodation and the design of all new secondary schools, colleges and other places of learning. They also had sent pupils to workshops at The Lighthouse. All this work had culminated in the production of the design guideline document: "More than just a place to learn" which is to be used nationally. These guidelines are full of imaginative examples of "opportunistic" features and flexiable spaces to encourage different ways of learning.

Interestingly when all the stakeholders had been surveyed on how they would like to use their working space, the least imaginative group and the only adult group that did not mention teaching methodologies were teachers themselves. This group tended to want more storage, more space, and cooler buildings in the summer.

The Lighthouse then reported back on the "Senses of Place" project which had been commissioned by the government.
In Phase 1, five local authorities supplied twenty professionals and a team of young people who worked together on one design theme to help deliver the Curriculum for Excellence. These themes included big spaces, science learning, community use, purposeful play and learning for life. Through these joint workshops the pupils confidence grew and they saw how everyone undertakes some sort of design activity almost everyday when we move through and use space.
Phase 2 was a design challenge. Designers and architects are used to working to specific briefs and so the workshops asked questions like: what, why, how, where, and when do people want to learn? These workshops between users and professionals were real ice-breakers and helped to generate lots of ideas.
Phase 3 will include an exhibition with a film about the project and will end with the publication of "Senses of Place" due in February 2008.

An architect, Barry Best then told us about "Project Faraday" which was commissioned by the Department of Children, Schools and Families on school design in England. Three consortia each worked with two schools and all of them took the same key themes:
- Design is centred on learning models - must be broad range as not one size fits all
- Design should be a catalyst for changing the learning process
- Designers should be innovative in thinking about space
Mr Best looked at the traits of "Net Generation learners" and the implications of various pedagogies on the interaction of people, places and processes and on design. He showed how plotting and mapping techniques generate a set of characteristics that help define the sort of requirements for the shell of the building, the furniture and the flexible spaces for learning. Each level of construction has cost implications and the lifetime of building also imposes different restrictions. He presented a chart that is used to help end users decide on how they want to achieve change, at what pace that should be developed and how mapping techniques are used in the design process.
Best worked through an exemplar for a very exciting new suite of laboratory spaces in a London school. This was a refurbishment and did not actually involve a new build but did mean a huge improvement in facilities and efficiency. It was to be used in various ways each day and by different classes.

The day concluded with presentations from ADES (Association of the Directors of Education) and Architecture and Design in Scotland and was interspersed with video presentations of inspired building design projects in various places.

The day was informative but overloaded and unfortunately that meant that time for participative discussion was very limited. The timetable repeatedly ran over and arrangements for lunch were hurried as well as overcrowded. The organisers would do well to take SPTC's example that less is often more as that may have delivered a more effective conference.

Jo Beaumont