Mediocrity worry for school upgrades

School buildings set for 'mediocre' upgrades

Monday, 21, Jul 2008 12:00

Plans to upgrade school buildings have been dismissed as "mediocre" by the government's architecture watchdog.

The Building Schools for the Future initiative provides £35 billion of funding for one of the biggest revamps of the nation's school buildings for a generation. All schools in England and Wales will receive some funding for upgrades to be completed by 2020.

According to government architecture watchdog the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (Cabe), 33 of the 40 most advanced designs are either "not good enough" or "mediocre".

A freedom of information request by the Guardian newspaper revealed Cabe's concerns. Under 20 per cent were judged either "good" or "excellent".

By 2011 every local authority in England will have received funding for the school at greatest need of upgrade work, while major rebuilding and remodelling projects are due to have begun in every local authority by 2016.

Today Cabe called for a design threshold to be established to ensure the quality of BSF schools.

After the first year of running a schools design panel, it found England's 3,500 secondary schools are at risk of running into basic planning failures and that only three of the 24 schemes now at planning application stage are "good" or "excellent".

Designs flaws are often very basic, with new buildings not being oriented well. School grounds are excessively dominated by car access and parking, despite most arriving on foot, while sustainability is low on the agenda for most.

Cabe chief executive Richard Simmons said: "What we need is a design threshold which will prevent bad schemes from continuing through the system.

"This would provide a very clear signal that good design is a core requirement of BSF, not an optional extra. It should not be acceptable for public money to be used to procure poorly designed schools."