In 2007 Walker Technology College in Newcastle received £13m funding from the government’s £70bn Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme to renovate its buildings. Headteacher Steve Gater knows how big an opportunity this is. ‘The last thing we want to have with our BSF project is a new old school,’ he says. He wants a school that helps the 1,200 pupils get the most out of learning and fits into the community. That's where designers at Dott 07 came in.
Walker was built in the 1930s and is showing its age. The main buildings no longer suit the the sort of teaching and learning that happen in the school. Kath Davidson, Head of Personalised Learning, says vocational learning is central to Walker’s offering. Old ways of teaching, where students sit in classrooms and learn from teachers and books, aren’t always the best way for them to work. As a process, Walker says vocational learning develops students who are independent thinkers, prepared for the world of work or higher education, organised, trustworthy and responsible, confident and mature and able to make their own career choices.
Just as vocational learning is a new way for pupils to work at school, it needs a new space, set up differently to a classroom. ‘At the moment, most vocational learning happens outside the school because there aren’t enough professional facilities on-site. For the students, vocational learning means working on-site with skilled staff as well as visiting neighbouring facilities for more appropriate training and instruction,’ says Davidson.
Students at Walker say changes need to be made. ‘It’s the same as when me Mum went there. When people come to play netball I’m embarrassed, and I want to feel proud about my school,’ says Latalia.
But how should it be changed? Deputy Head Mike Collier says: ‘We want to work in modern accommodation, take advantage of modern technologies and a broader vocational curriculum. But we have to be careful that we build new learning, not a new building with old learning practice. That’s the real challenge of BSF, transforming the learning experience.’
The process identifies the problem Walker needed to make sure it got value for money when it spent its £13m BSF allocation and that the money was targeted where it was needed most and where it would most benefit the school. Its first priority was to ask more than, ‘how should it look?’ It wanted to ask pupils and teachers what worked and didn’t in the current school. It wanted to know what they thought could and should work better in the future. This is where the designers helped out. They wanted to help Walker ask the right questions and involve the whole school in designing a better place to learn.
Julia Schaeper, from service design agency Engine, says: ‘Before you redesign a school building, it’s important to look at what goes on in school and to think about what school could – or should – be like for those who study and work in it as well as their families and others who live nearby. And that’s exactly what we’re trying to do with our co-design team.’
First, staff and pupils analysed every part of the school, from the site itself to the toilets, canteen, bike sheds and the playing fields, and judged how well they worked. Then, Engine focused on what the design priorities are when a school is rebuilt. The design team had to prioritise the concerns and problems that had been raised. Was disliking the school loos more or less important than finding it difficult to decide what to study at GCSE? Was wanting to learn from qualified professionals as well as teachers as important as wanting the canteen to look nicer? Could some strategic thinking be used to change how things worked rather than what they looked like?
Schaeper says: ‘The people at Walker were passionate and excited about the idea of working with a service design agency that would look at systems and processes first and at the building second. We built a co-design team and literally lived in the school for some time to understand it as an organism and as a system first in terms of processes: What are the different things and activities that go on inside a school? Who’s actually using it? Where are the problem areas? What are the little day-by-day jams that occur?’
Headteacher Steve Gater says: ‘At the moment we know we are constrained by the building itself but also by the traditions and some of the ways we do things, and working with Engine as a design group is enabling us to rethink and challenge the design status quo.’
Dott 07
Designs of the time '07 (Dott07) was a year-long series of design projects run by the Design Council and the regional development agency One NorthEast to involve local people in exploring how design can improve everyday life. www.dott07.com