Education, Education, Education

Here’s a bit of vintage Blair for you: “Sustainable development will not just be a subject in the classroom: it will be in its bricks and mortar and the way the school uses and even generates its own power. Our students won’t just be told about sustainable development, they will see and work within a school that is a living, learning place in which to explore what a sustainable lifestyle means”.Having delivered himself of these eloquent words, Tony Blair sat back and got on with other things, presumably on the assumption that the Department for Children, Schools and Families would get together with Treasury and just ‘make it happen’. DCSF delivered on its side of the deal in terms of its ‘Sustainable Schools’ initiative, which is one of the best things the Labour Government has done. But from the point of view of our educational estate, Treasury and DCSF then spent the next decade scrapping over what could or couldn’t be done, from a sustainability perspective, through Building Schools for the Future, PFI and other capital programmes.Net outcome ten years on: pretty poor. Some brilliant (even ‘iconic’) examples of best practice on both new build and refurbishments; a somewhat larger number of projects that might be described as ‘good, but nothing special’, and a much, much larger number of projects that fall so far short of what could have been done as to make Tony Blair’s words ring very hollow indeed.It’s hard to exaggerate the scale of this missed opportunity – from an educational as well as a sustainability point of view. Here’s a very different kind of quote from an Ofsted Report last year:“In the sample schools, ‘hands-on activities’ in a range of locations contributed to improvements in standards, achievement, motivation, personal development and behaviour”.What’s being referred to here is what is known as ‘Learning Outside the Classroom’. Not just in terms of school visits and field trips, but in terms of the use of School Grounds designed specifically to promote good learning and excellent social interaction. In other words, proof positive of the kind of educational outcome that can be achieved by designing schools to the highest sustainability standards.During the election period, I’d like to see those words embossed in gold and hung over the desk of the Secretary of State at DCSF – in preparation for the next holder of that Office. They would remind him/her that schools that are well-designed, zero-carbon, super-efficient, bio-diverse and just great places to be, make a massive contribution to learning, motivation and even behaviour.What kind of money value should we put on that as taxpayers? I only ask because Treasury puts a zero value on it. It really couldn’t care less about the huge societal benefits that flow from that kind of educational uplift.Indeed, Treasury is so utterly dysfunctional that it still hasn’t settled on a standard way of accounting for the reduced operating costs of super-efficient, very low-carbon schools over the life-time of any new or even refurbished school. Time after time, as a direct result of this failure, the blindingly obvious case for spending more up front on capital costs (anywhere between 10% and 15%, depending on particular circumstances) is ignored – or eroded away as the inevitable cost-cutting kicks in during the design and construction phase for both new build and refurbishments.The sums involved here (in terms of capital programmes for the educational estate) are staggering: at least £45 billion over a ten-year period. Knowing what we now know about future energy costs and the likely cost of carbon, it’s criminally irresponsible not to be spending every one of those pounds as sustainably as possible in order to protect the interests of future taxpayers.A worthy case, perhaps, for the Taxpayers’ Alliance – if they weren’t so ideologically predisposed against anything progressive, let alone sustainable.One of the organisations that has been tracking this story close-up has been Learning Through Landscapes (LTL). LTL was set up 20 years ago, to get Head Teachers, the Department, Local Education Authorities and Ofsted to focus in on the importance of school grounds, both from a recreational and an educational point of view. During that time it’s advised and supported hundreds of schools, lobbied a stream of Ministers, and helped make life better, on the ground, for countless kids passing through those improved premises.It’s achieved a huge amount – as became very clear at its 20th Anniversary Conference in London last week. But it could have achieved so much more if it hadn’t come up against the Treasury’s reality-defying short-termism.