12 EDUCATION
Ty Goddard profile
By Ruth Slavid
MANY OF THE IDEAS CURRENTLY BEING DEBATED IN EDUCATION ORIGINATE IN A TINY ORGANISATION SET UP IN 2006, AND WHICH STILL ONLY EMPLOYS A HANDFUL OF PEOPLE.
‘Three years ago people thought we were crackers because we were taking parties to visit Swedish “free schools” ’, explains Ty Goddard, chief executive and founder of the British Council for School Environments. ‘Now they are part of Conservative policy.’
G
oddard set up the membership organisation, which is also a charity, with the intention of making schools
and their design better. He was concerned that while the funding was there, the know- how did not always accompany it. ‘We are able to put out what we judge and what our members judge some of the best practice around,’ he explains. He does this through a mix of seminars, study tours, awards, events such as the ‘Big School Makeover’ and now an online think tank called The Centre for School Design. The organisation also acts as a consultant to local authorities, for example helping Salford with community engagement work ahead of its BSF (Building Schools for the Future) bid.
Goddard’s attitude towards the massive investment represented by BSF and now by the Primary Capital Programme is a mixture of delight and despair. ‘We have had an unparalleled time of massive investment,’ he says. ‘The scale and ambition is fantastic in terms of our schools estate. It almost represents the best of Britain.’ But, there is a but. ‘The key issue is the procurement process,’ he says. ‘It is costly, wasteful and
verging on the immoral.’ He bemoans ‘the cost and the waste in the system, and the difficulty that a lot of clients have had in terms of coping’ and says ‘it is not a procurement process with teaching and learning at its heart.’
Now there is general consensus that the procurement process is far from ideal but at the time that Goddard set up BCSE there were, he says, ‘only two voices – the RIBA and me.’ He feels that there is a need for more accountability by government, and that Partnership for Schools is too powerful and, through fear, can stifle debate. ‘At the heart of government we need a national advisory council that can tell politicians what is going on, and what are the blockages. We need a feedback mechanism at the heart of government. You don’t want people feeling commercially threatened if they speak their minds.’
Goddard evidently never feels afraid to speak his mind. He has a strong background in education, including being chair of education at Lambeth Council. But the early days of BCSE were, he says, ‘hard’.
The bright colour of the central library, with its protruding brise soleil, helps to give the building a civic presence
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