New Surroundings

Whitmore Park Primary School in Coventry opened its doors to pupils on 1 May 2014 as the first completed project under the government’s Priority School Building Programme (PSBP). It had its dilapidated school building completely rebuilt as part of the £2.4 billion programme to rebuild 261 of the schools in England in the worst condition.

In total, 28 schools are now either under construction or open as part of the PSBP, while design work has begun at 234 schools, which makes up 90 per cent of the programme, and all schools should be delivered by the end of 2017.

A second phase of the programme, worth around £2 billion for spending between 2015 and 2021 was announced in May and the deadline for submitting expressions of interest was on 21 July.

Schools Minister David Laws explains how the second phase of spending will work: “The original Priority School Building Programme worked on the basis of the condition of the whole school site. We will now refine this to look at targeting individual school buildings, as well as whole school rebuilds where this is appropriate, so that the department can focus much more tightly on addressing specific issues in the estate. This is only possible thanks to the data coming out of our detailed condition survey.

“That survey will be complete by the summer and will give us a detailed pattern of need which will be a useful tool for targeting the available resources most effectively.”

A CHANGE OF PROGRAMME
The Priority School Building Programme is a government programme set up to address the condition of the schools most in need of urgent repair. It is split into capital funded projects and private finance projects. The programme was announced after the Labour’s Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme was contraversially scrapped by the coalition government.

Some 715 projects were cancelled when the BSF programme stopped, and the PSBP includes just 69 of those owing to different eligibility criteria. This resulted in hundreds of schools loosing out on millions of pounds in capital investment.

While the BSF programme had been expected to cost £55bn and was a pledge to rebuild every secondary school in England, the Priority School Building Programme had, in its first stage, a £2bn budget for work to be done over five years.

When announcing the cancellation of the BSF programme, former Education Secretary Michael Gove told the Commons that the scheme had been hit by “massive overspends, tragic delays, botched construction projects and needless bureaucracy.”

A MODEL PSBP SCHOOL
While there are many instances of schools unhappy because their applications have been refused – and indeed some that have had theirs accepted but are still waiting for funding or work to commence, many schools accepted into the scheme are enjoying the benefits.

Whitmore Park Primary for example has reason to celebrate. Caroline Kiely, executive headteacher at Whitmore Park Primary School,
said: “I’m sure the new school environment will make a real difference to the staff and children here at Whitmore Park.

Our previous building was past its best so the new school will mean that less money will have to be spent on repairs and can be spent on better equipment or more staff instead.”

Pupil Bryn Williams, nine, said: “It’s a bit hard to find our way around. But it’s better than the old one. Everything kept breaking and there were leaks and buckets in the corridor.”

Whitmore Park Primary has become a model for PSBP schools, with procurement taking only 13 weeks and building works complete in just 11 months.

Schools Minister David Laws said: “The opening of Whitmore Park marks a major milestone in the Priority School Building Programme, which is making great strides in ensuring that vital building work takes place at some of the schools in the worst state across the country.”

NEW SURROUNDINGS
The £5 million Whitmore Park project comprises a new build primary school for 630 pupils with a 39-place nursery. The two wings share a central hub comprising the entrance, studio and hall, making it an efficient and effective design.

The two-storey school now includes two halls, which enables staff to run lunch time activities for one group of children while others are eating.

The new building has gone up alongside the old one which is due for demolition. The former building dates back to the early 1950s and is one of several city primary schools built with metal originally destined for the aircraft industry.

Stephen Beechey, managing director for education and investment at Wates, the contractor who built the school, said: The Priority School Building Programme is proving itself an extremely successful means of ensuring new school facilities result in inspirational learning environments that encourage educational excellence.

This can clearly be seen in the delivery of Whitmore Park. Wates has maintained a close working partnership with the Education Funding Agency throughout the design and build programme to maintain cost and time efficiency, leading to completion of the first school under the programme.”


THE BUILDING
The method of construction consisted of reduced level excavations, pad foundations, steel frame with pre-cast concrete floors and various façades, such as brick, render and curtain walling. The external works included hard play areas, soft landscape and a car park to the south of the site.


The school was designed using Wate’s Adapt standardised school approach, which formed the basis of the Government’s James Review into the design and procurement of schools. Adapt allows clients to benefit from economies of scale from purchasing the same elements, whilst still having enough flexibility for each school to remain individual.


The facility features a steel frame structure with brick and block cavity walls and the use of precast concrete planks used as thermal mass. It has a single ply Sarnafil roof with six sun pipes to draw in sunlight and the classroom window row luminaires are daylight linked to reduce energy consumption. There are point-of-use Zip boiler water heaters, which were locally installed to minimise pipe work and sizes.

The project was completed on time and on budget and was delivered at a cost of almost £1,000/m2 less than a comparitive BSF scheme.

The new facility occupies one third the footprint size of its predecessor, allowing for greater external play area. What’s more 97.5 per cent of waste was diverted from landfill.

Coventry City Council’s cabinet member for education Coun David Kershaw said partnership working between the school, Coventry City Council, the architects and building contractor Wates meant the school was built more quickly than usual.


STANDARDISED DESIGNS
The James Review was ordered by Michael Gove after the cancellation of the BSF programme to investigate ways to improve efficiency and reduce waste in central school building programmes. It was carried out by a panel led by Sebastian James, head of the Dixons group and was completed in April 2011. It set out 16 recommendations for a new approach to school buildings and stated that school buildings should be based on a set of standardised specifications and designs.

The review stated that a suite of drawings be developed showing layouts, dimensions of walls and spaces and indications of how different components and materials can be used. It also said that in the future more off‑site construction could be used for elements such as specialist classrooms and plant rooms.

The review was part of the government’s drive to save 30 per cent from the cost of procuring the new school buildings.

RAISING STANDARDS
The PSBP is part of the government’s aim to deliver a more efficient, faster, less bureaucratic approach to building schools.

Following the James review to improve efficiency and reduce waste in central school building programmes, the government is building or improving the condition of almost 900 schools. This includes building almost 300 brand new schools, rebuilding and renovating 200 of the most dilapidated schools in the country, and approving funding for more than 400 projects from previous programmes.

Now the deadline has passed for expressions of interest in the second round of the PSBP, schools will hear by the end of the year whether they have been successful in attracting funding based on an assessment of those in greatest need.

FURTHER INFORMATION
www.gov.uk