Hi, Ben - how are you?

 

I'm very good, thanks. How are you?

 

I'm very good. I wanted to quiz you about your time as chair of the NLA expert panel in education, which I think is four years and I think you're standing down fairly soon. You've got your last one coming up - you're standing down in October but will carry on the panel. That's quite a long time, so I imagine there's been a lot of discussion about the subject. What are the key things that pop out at you as trends across that period? What were the emerging trends and the ones that were perennials?

 

Well, it's interesting. When we started, the expert panel was actually health and education prior to that. So, it broke out to become education, and it was in the depth of the second COVID lockdown when we started. So, it was online, and there was much talk about the impact, of course, of COVID-19 on education; how educators were managing. One of the great things about the panel that the NLA have assembled is that it's a cross-section of everyone involved in the education, built environment. So, you have practitioners, teachers, Academy trust represented, local authorities, as well as design practitioners. And the really uniting thing about everybody on the panel is that everyone in the sector really cares very passionately about it, and about young people in particular, and the outcomes on them. The impact of COVID was obviously a huge point of discussion at the time, and has been subsequently, because it still is a big issue in schools. As we read about in particular, in terms of behavioural change, students not in school, SEN needs increasing almost exponentially, it seems, and the impact of that in terms of how spaces and schools are managing. So that was how we began, and that took us into lots of spin-off conversations and discussions around things like technology in education; how that was being adopted, how that was going to change coming out of the pandemic and so on. And then what actually the landscape of education might look like at that point. There were several people questioning whether students in universities would ever go back into lecture theatres at one point. Of course, that's now become more balanced, but still, at university level, there's now a lot more online activity happening than there was, as we had in the workplace, pre-pandemic. So there have undoubtedly been those impacts that were signposted by the conversations we were having in the panel at that time.

 

Can I just interrupt there, just briefly on the university sector, because it interests me greatly, the university sector in London, particularly, and I wondered to what extent it's linked to the high price of accommodation, and linked to the whole issue of student accommodation. Did you get into that kind of stuff?

 

We've touched on it. As I said, one of the things that is great about the panel is the mix and blend of people we've had on it, and one of the things that was a major theme during the first two years, which fed into our work on the Agenda, was access to education, and actually how young people access education. Of course, student accommodation and the cost of accommodation in certain areas is absolutely key to that, and London is particularly affected in that regard.

 

Have numbers dropped off as a result, to London universities? Do people consider universities financially now in cheaper towns, as it were, or cheaper locations?

 

I'm not sure of the statistics around it exactly, but certainly, London has a certain draw for students because of the quality of a number of its institutions. I think that perhaps slightly sways how it might otherwise be affected. But certainly, the conversations that we were having in the panel were more around, actually, whether young people could afford to even consider it as an option, because of the cost. So whilst popular or highly regarded London institutions will probably always be able to fill their student numbers, what's certainly been a pattern that you see reported, and that has also been discussed in the panel is the proportion of students that are coming who are non-UK origins, and that has all sorts of ramifications in terms of access to education for British-born students. 

 

So, moving to some of the other sectors; schools and nurseries. What are some of the key changes there? Is there demographic change there, and shrinkage, and classroom sizes - are they issues? 

 

Yes. So that, again, was another interesting thing where it felt like, in hindsight, the panel felt like a little bit of a canary in the coal mine, because we heard very early on - we had colleagues on the panel from local authorities in inner London who were reporting that they were seeing really significant demographic shifts, particularly as a result not just of COVID, but Brexit, and families who had previously been part of communities in London moving away. And on top of the demographic shift around baby booms and so on, they were seeing an exaggerated change that was happening quite rapidly. And they were reporting that school closures were being considered almost year-on-year, in some inner London boroughs. That has become quite a big story since then, and has had quite wide implications. One of the things that was just again discussed in our panel was what we might do with space that is becoming available in schools. Or whether schools get reused for other purposes. There was another discussion around the fact that in London over the years, many very fine London board schools, which, you know, to be honest, make a very good school building - they were built as such and designed very well - there was a period when many of them were converted into apartments. Then they were lost to the community as a community resource, when numbers returned. It's quite important that what doesn't happen again is that school properties, or property that's in public ownership for the use of education isn't lost in perpetuity, for as and when that demographic situation reverses, as it may well do or probably will do. So, we were talking about whether or not there are other uses that school spaces could be put to in, for example, adult education. There was a lot of discussion on the access to education point about whether the current further education model is right to have large, big institutions that are perhaps more distant from communities, and whether actually facilities could be more localized to individual communities. That was a potential use of schools. Also, nursery spaces, and whether nursery spaces could be more integrated into schools, because that's, again, a significant problem. And I noted that the current or the new government has started signalling that that is what they intend to actually do, which is interesting,

 

And what are the key issues? I mean, some schools have problems with overlooking, for example, don't they, in terms of colocation?

 

Yes, so that did actually come up in one of our panels where, in urban areas, it makes sense to start thinking about integrating educational facilities into other building types. But it's not without its own challenges. We heard a very direct experience of a very good school, but actually some of its open spaces; its playgrounds and so on, are actually overlooked by residential development that was built as part of the same development. And as a consequence, that presents safeguarding issues for the school and the school governance.

 

You mentioned Labour just now and the new government and I wondered what your hopes were, if you projected forward, for any change across this sector. What do you expect to happen? And what do you hope to happen?

 

I think hope and expectations are completely different things! (laughs). So, I think there's over 24,000 schools in England and 32,000 in the UK. And a significant proportion of those - you may say the majority - need some considerable attention. One of the major themes of the panel was actually the whole condition of the education estate. We were talking, not specifically about RAAC, but about the condition of structure, condition of, you know, poor quality of learning spaces, poor ventilation, poor lighting, life-expired facilities. There was a whole generation of schools built post-war, which have all very naturally come to their not necessarily end of life, but end of life, as in needing heavy refurbishment, if not rebuild. And the issue for the incoming government is the same as the issue the last government had. It's that. That's the condition of the estate, and something significant needs to be done.

 

Yeah, usually! (laughs) And is that including energy issues too?

 

Absolutely it is. All new schools since November '21 in England, procured by the DfE, are carbon neutral or zero carbon in operation, but they are not whole-life carbon neutral. So, we've actually done some work in our own practice looking at measuring carbon in schools, and what we found is that on a whole-life carbon basis, there's actually not much progress being made, because as buildings become much more efficient, as we know, operational, carbon becomes less of an issue. In any case, as the grid decarbonizes, it's less of an issue. And the embodied carbon of what you're actually making the building from becomes a much more significant component of the whole life carbon proposition. So, we touched on that, but another of our panellists, a member from the BFE, points out that the majority of buildings and school buildings we're working with are the ones that already exist. You know, that's the estate. So, we have to actually find ways of decarbonizing those, as far as is practically possible, whilst considering that they are occupied full-time learning spaces and so on. As much as we can focus on what we do about the relatively limited number of new builds that are possible within the government's finances.

 

And in terms of, let's call it the 'market' for building new schools and university accommodation, what's your weather gauge on that in terms of Jestico and Whiles, as a practice director?

 

So, we're celebrating 100 schools this year, so we're sort of looking back and also looking forward...

 

...that you've that you've designed, really?

 

...that we've built, or we're building.  So, we were hoping we would be at 100 by this point, but we're not quite there. We're not quite there but it's an artificial milestone. But we've actually been back and visited schools, and done some PoE, but I can come back to that in a moment. In terms of the outlook of the market, I don't know whether there's going to be the money that you would hope that the new government would be able to invest in education like previous Labour administrations have done. It's too thinly spread, and you can see that they've got many competing calls on the limited resources available. So, my presumption is that they will carry on spending - the department will carry on spending at   the rate it has been, or perhaps more. Optimistically, they would spend more. I'm not looking at that from our own purposes of building more schools, but more the condition of the estate. The condition the estate is deteriorating faster than it's being regenerated. That has been the trend under the previous government, and we have to reverse that. So somehow, we have to work on enough school buildings per year to at least stand still, and if not improve the overall estate. In the university sector, I think that what we've been seeing is that there is less capital spend on wholly new marquee facilities. We're actually ourselves just completing the new Cavendish Laboratories for the University of Cambridge, which is an enormous, very important landmark project. But you get the sense that those kinds of projects going forward, for most estates it's about consolidation, looking post-COVID at their overall estate, and what their efficiency of use, their utilization, and then, of course, the whole decarbonization piece and how they get towards an electrified estate.

 

Wow! You mentioned PoEs just briefly as a last point. What was your main finding there? 

 

Well, the sector doesn't do enough of it. I think we all agree. So, we've done our own version, and we stay in touch with a lot of the schools that we've designed, and we've gone back and visited five. We have collaborated with an audio producer and a filmmaker who we've worked with before to capture, because for us, and I think for any architect working in education, what's important is not really the architecture. Of course, if it wins an award along the way, that's all great. But actually, what's important is what happens within it, and the work that the teachers and educators do with young people. And we've gone back to capture the communities that are happening within our buildings, and just try to learn more from how they're using them, what's working well for them, and what isn't. I think the main takeaway has been that buildings that have an optimism of space, of light, of good ventilation and good acoustics seem to all be working really well, and the communities seem to be thriving within them, which is very positive.

 

Yes, and that is applicable to every building type, really, isn't it, I suppose, as well (laughs)

 

Well, indeed! Not just universities, and not, just schools, no! Not at all.

 

Any last thoughts in terms of the four years you've been on this panel, and going forward?

 

Well, for me, it's been a real privilege to be in the chair, and I've really appreciated the contributions; the wide range of voices that we've had around the table over those four years has been really fantastic. I've certainly learnt a lot and I think everybody who's been on the panel has learnt a lot from our fellow colleagues, and I look forward to continuing to contribute and continuing to learn as the panel moves forward.

 

Well, on behalf of NLA - and pupils everywhere and students everywhere - thank you for your work.

 

Thank you, David, that's great!