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Figure 3.4 A new role for learning in the community or how it will be provided within the Building Schools for the
Future programme. Again, it involves the idea that schools are
also about childcare, adult education, parent and community
groups, and using school space out of hours to increase utilisation
to well beyond the 18 per cent I spoke about earlier. A more cynical
driver for increased utilisations, by the way, is that someone at the
DfES noticed that schools are much more likely to burn down
when they’re empty.
So, the boundaries between the school and the community are
dissolving Figure 3.4. But what does this actually mean for school
buildings? For the last 40 years the school gates have been locked,
before now but now school is going to become a permeable space, with all
sorts of activities going on at all sorts of times. What impacts will
that have on the circulation, the security, the layering of space?
These are the kinds of issues we are exploring. The schools being
designed as part of Building Schools for the Future need to be
Figure 3.5 Blended science education able to respond to a wide range of different ways of thinking about
education, and to different degrees of formality, different uses of
Virtual Physical space, and different uses of time. The real challenge for school
designers now is that a variety of approaches to education will
Communicate
• Share • Websites • Presentations exist simultaneously. There are many strands of thought about
the results • Wikis • Models future schools; and the character of individual schools will also
• Video • Reports
ultimately depend in part on the culture of the community, the
• Video
management team and the policy of the local authority.
conferences
Analyse
• Understand • On-line tools • Tabulation A good example of a project where almost overwhelming
the data • PC statistics challenges have been broken down into more manageable chunks
and graphing is Project Faraday, an initiative launched by the DfES to reinvent
tools science at school. The project responds to concern in the UK at
Experiment
• Test the • On-line • Laboratory the decline in the number of science students in higher education
hypothesis experiments and field to the extent that some science departments are even threatened
• Simulations experiments with closure. One of the factors that is seen as a contributor is the
poor quality of the science experience at school, characterised
Observe
• Search • Webcams • Out of school by smelly science laboratories and Bunsen burners.
for patterns • On-line data learning
streams • Laboratory DEGW is leading one of three teams who are striving to reinvent
• Virtual reality demonstrations the school science experience, not just in terms of space but
• Video/dvd also in designing the experiments themselves – we’re working with
Explore exhibition designers to think about the experience interactively, so
• Understand • On-line research • Visits
that space and technology are linked in meaningful interaction not
the context • Webcasts • Discussions
• Develop the • Printed just within the science laboratory but also out in the surrounding
hypothesis materials community Figure 3.5. One of the aspects of this project is trying
to address the tension that exists between students as producers

10 Primary and secondary education