What makes a great SEND school?
Over the last three years, our teams have been working with a large network of customers, consultants and influencers to answer exactly that question.
“The people that matter most are the pupils, and ultimately, that’s what it comes down to – it’s about making the best for our young people who are really special, and really need specialist buildings.” Simon Wall, Headteacher, Lexden Springs School
Back in 2019, we commissioned some in-depth research, from which our Building Better Futures white paper was published. This paper outlined the current landscape in SEND and proposed a hat trick of key commitments to move the journey forward.
The main target was to create a Blueprint for Success. An accessible document that anyone could use if they were about to embark upon the design and delivery of a SEND school.
In this short video, some of our key contributors explain a bit more about the journey and how we arrived at the blueprint.
“It’s about treating everybody equally and making sure that young people who have these very special needs, get high quality environments that inspire and stimulate them.” Claire Barton, Partner, Haverstock
The best way to solve problems, is by asking questions
After the launch of the white paper, we set about asking questions to look at solving the challenge of what makes a great SEND school. This included commissioning POEs (Post Occupancy Evaluations) and running a series of knowledge forums with headteacher, architects, engineers, consultants and influencers.
“We realised there were parts of the design we could improve and that it was a great opportunity to bring experts together to debate the right way to build these schools and break down the key areas for the buildings. It was a really brilliant environment that we could get everybody’s knowledge together.” Peter Whitmore, Managing Director - East, Morgan Sindall Construction
Over the course of six months, these knowledge forums delivered around 1,500 data points. These were then filtered down and reshaped into questions that would be grounded into sections (such as classrooms, dining spaces, hydrotherapy pools, external spaces, etc).
“That’s what was magic about those meetings – everybody was coming together because they wanted it to be better.” Simon Wall, Headteacher, Lexden Springs School
The blueprint runs in sync with BB104 (the Department for Educations Building Bulletin that links to SEND schools) and helps anyone starting with a blank sheet of paper answer all the pertinent questions to arrive at a school specific brief. Our hope is that it will accelerate the design process by considering all the potential challenges before entering the ring-fenced design and build phase.
“It’s not a document that tells you how to do it. It’s that starting point of building a new SEND school or setting. It’s about getting people ready for the design and delivery process. There’s not huge amounts of time to have the conversation, yet the conversation is the most important way to innovate and make sure we’re designing something that will live on into the future. Our document gets them ready for those conversations.” Claire Barton, Partner, Haverstock
This short animation briefly explains why the document is designed as questions, rather than giving all the answers!
An infinite journey
Whilst the SEND Blueprint for Success launches today, it has been designed as a digital document ready to be evolved as needs change.
Even our early research kept bringing up the statement that ‘one size doesn’t fit all’ and for that reason, we know we’ll be developing the document, so that it remains useful for schools, designers, local authorities and contractors too.
“At the end of the day we want everyone to work together and produce schools that are successful and make the most difference in peoples lives.” Mark Pratt, Department for Education