Education Buildings Journal
Why is a Good Quality School Estate so Important?
Over the past few years, the condition of Scotland’s school estate has become a very emotive issue. There has been, often quite rightly, media attention about the condition of our school estate.
All too often we focus on the issues or problems – never on the successes and improvements that have been made. However, we’ve not had our problems to seek. Recent events such as the construction problems discovered at 17 schools in Edinburgh and at a number of other schools around the country can quickly undermine the public’s confi dence in the quality and safety of our buildings.
The Government’s position is clear – every child and staff member should feel safe at school, and every parent is entitled to believe their child’s school is well built and fi t for purpose. Addressing these issues requires signifi cant investment, but investment on its own is not enough. We need to ensure we are procuring high quality, well designed and properly constructed buildings. This is integral to our approach. We’ve made fantastic progress and we now have some wonderful, award winning schools across all parts of Scotland. However, we must not be complacent, and recognise there is still much to do.
Since 2009, the Scottish Government and all 32 local authorities have worked together through the ‘Schools for the Future Programme’ to deliver 117 new and refurbished school projects. Eighty-three of these are now open to pupils and wider
Andrew Dailly Head of School Building, Scottish Government
Interior of Anderson High School
communities, twenty-fi ve are currently in construction, and the remaining nine are in the fi nal stages of design. The ‘School Estate Strategy: Building Better Schools (2009)’, said that schools should be ‘well designed, well maintained, and well managed’ and this philosophy underpins the programme’s objectives. As we near the completion of the programme, we believe it is appropriate that we refl ect on the success we have achieved to date.
“The Government’s position is clear – every child and staff member should feel safe
at school, and every parent is entitled to believe their child’s school is well built and fi t for purpose.”
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