February 1, 2009 UK - Building Schools for The Future

A very good series of articles published by the guardian.co.uk titled "Building schools for the future." As it turns out England is investing £45bn to rebuild and revamp its secondary schools.

Introduction
Work in progress
(excerpt)
Billions of pounds of expenditure to rebuild or refurbish around 3,500 English state secondary schools and provide a bright new future for some three million pupils by 2020 ... the scale and ambition of the government's Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme is immense.
It's already started — back in 2005 — and for the next 10-15 years the programme will move, phase by phase, through English schools. By 2011 all local authorities should have had sufficient funding to tackle at least the most needy schools in their areas. How long the programme will actually take to complete beyond that can only be estimated.
In May 2006, the first new-build school — Solihull Centre for Inclusive learning — opened for business. Since then at least 10 new or refurbished schools have come on stream.
This supplement focuses on their experiences to help benefit the thousands of schools to follow — it shows how such a vast programme can only work if builder, architect, teacher, pupil, parent and governor are all consulted throughout every decision-making stage.

Forget bricks, think ideas
How do you build a school for the future? Who's involved and what influence can those within the education system exert?

Some related links
Partnerships for Schools
British Council for School Environments
Sorrell Foundation
Hugh Christie technology college
RM

Trailblazers offer their verdict
Transforming a school is a long and, at times, difficult process. Here we look at a new inner-city comprehensive and two schools that have undergone major refurbishments to check out their experiences

Haringey sixth-form centre, London
'Students have access to teaching and learning fit for the 21st century'
Oxclose, Sunderland
'Architects spent a lot of time consulting students and staff'
Oxclose Community School