Here we go again

Colour of night

The University of Derby has transformed a multi-storey link staircase into a dynamic beacon for its Kedleston Road campus. The installation was undertaken as part of a re-cladding project involving three tower blocks. Architecture and design consultants Tilney Shane used Martin Professional to provide a cost effective scheme to light the planar glazed staircase. Cyclo fluorescent colour changers were installed to allow infinitely programmable color shifts and variations.

(Photo: Dave Stewart)

www.tilneyshane.co.uk www.martin.com

IT’S CURIOUS how politicians sound more alike with each passing day. As the election draws near, spin and soundbite are carefully measured to chime with the public mood. In education, they are offering much the same thing – “more choice, better results and less bureaucracy”, but it’s the nature of party rhetoric to raise more questions than answers. Expect to see greater autonomy for teachers – with the appropriate checks and balances of course; more encouragement for private sector partners – though they can’t be in it for profit; and fewer schools possibly – but, not to worry, smaller class sizes will still be achievable.

Picking our way through the conflicting signals and hidden agendas would be a sight easier if we could agree, once and for all, where we stand educationally as a nation. We lack, as yet, any meaningful way of measuring success beyond the existing ratings and rankings, which are clearly open to interpretation. How is it, for example, that educational attainment has “never been higher” when some of the country’s largest private sector employers (Tesco and Marks & Spencer) describe standards of reading, writing and maths as woefully low (1)

. Polarised views in this regard have

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given some cause to question whether increased funding actually improves educational performance – and, mid-way through a £45 billion building programme, this is not a thought many of us wish to entertain.

Employers’ perspectives inevitably come into the mix as we attempt to produce the skill sets needed to rebuild the economy. Aspiration is what the Government wants schools to sell and, whilst that’s fine for students destined for the knowledge-intensive jobs to be found in areas such as Brighton, Reading and Cambridge (2)

, one must consider what

opportunities are being created for those returning to the former industrial heartlands of the midlands and the north, where there is little or no private sector growth.

Given enough time, BSF and the other capital programmes may provide their own solutions to these problems, by daring to try new approaches to learning, by actively engaging with their communities and, importantly, by providing a regional focus for business activity and innovation.

(1) Tesco’s Lucy Neville-Rolfe and M&S’s Stuart Rose, quoted in the Guardian, 10 March 2010. (2) Centre for Cities annual economic index

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