Over the course of our recent meetings, the panel identified a series of priorities for education from a built environment perspective.

Access to Education, to which we added Employment and Training, has been a recurring theme, particularly early years and adult education, where funding has been constrained. Panellists also linked access to the provision of a Creative Curriculum in schools. This has direct relevance to our sector: young people with limited access to creativity in their curriculum will be far less likely to pursue careers in the built environment.

Achieving Net Zero, an overlap with the dedicated NLA panel, presents a particular challenge in education where much of the estate already exists and is continuously occupied, inhibiting refurbishment. Ideas mooted included imposing a levy on demolition, zero-rating VAT on refurbishment and utilising capacity in the wider education estate to allow for programmed strategic retrofit including offers for employment and training. The connection of net zero to retrofit brought other ideas including a presumption in favour of change-of-use to education and against changing from education, particularly external spaces.

Wellbeing and the Quality of the Environment, aside from improving the quality of learning environments – ventilation / air quality being a particular focus in previous panels - brought a calls for best practice case studies from across London, for more Forest Schools, and, with landscape budgets routinely being the first to be cut, perhaps a per cent for landscape / public realm / greenspace, which is ring-fenced and protected.