International schools market: If you build it, they will buy it

As the construction industry tries to come to terms with the end of Building Schools for the Future and awaits with some trepidation the government’s spending cuts announcement next month, we will no doubt in the fullness of time look back at the past 10 years as the golden age of school building in this country. Not only was funding at an astronomically high level
– £8bn a year for the past two years - but also there was great willingness on the part of the government to encourage good design, develop innovative ideas and create exciting and inspirational spaces.

The worry now is that as capital spending is drastically cut, the experience and skills that have been developed will go to waste. This need not be the case. While we have been preoccupied with BSF and academies, there has been huge growth in demand for good education and schools in the developing world. There has been globalisation of education. In emerging economies such as India, China, Nigeria and South Africa, there is now a large middle class, and parental aspirations and commitment to education are high. Demand is highest for British and American curriculum schools. Working on school development projects in these countries over the past two years it became obvious to me that we could have filled every single school we could have built in places such as India, Egypt and Nigeria.

Sadly, the demand is not being met because it is too expensive to build our type of schools, at £25m each. Ironically, even we cannot afford them now. What we need is a new model of school that can be built anywhere in the world at a much reduced cost.

If the British construction industry can develop such models, I believe it can capture a large slice of a huge international market for schools, not just in developing countries but also in eastern Europe where there has been little investment in educational infrastructure over the past 40 years.

Designers and construction companies will need to work with educationalists and ask some searching questions about the sort of spaces are needed in a modern school. Why do schools need to be so large? Do we need eight labs when there is little practical science being done? Why do we need large libraries in schools? We must make sure that these models meet the following criteria:

• Schools must reflect the latest educational thinking and developments in ICT. In a few years, devices like tablet PCs will be more powerful, far cheaper and widely used in education.School buildings must be suited to this kind of technology and be able to adapt to new ICT.
• Schools must be affordable and capable of being erected in countries where construction skills may be limited. This points to an element of standardisation and a “kit of parts” approach. We need to move forward our thinking on system buildings, which forever seems to be rooted in the negative experiences of the sixties. We also need to look at new materials, in particular timber and fabric. We should look to build schools with a design life of 25 to 30 years rather than the 60 we were designing for in BSF.
• We must also make sure that these schools are among the most sustainable buildings in their communities. The systems that we develop must be capable of delivering zero-carbon schools. Global warming is going to be a big issue in all our children’s lives and if they are using a building that has low environmental impact it is sending a powerful message to future generations.

Over the past 10 years or so, the school building specialists of the UK - both the designers and contractors - have acquired a deep knowledge of the needs of modern educational facilities. At a personal level, for most people involved in schools design, the experience has been satisfying and professionally rewarding. It would be great if this collective experience could now be used to give much-needed schools to the children in developing countries.

It will be challenging to create the low-cost and rapid-build solutions needed but I have no doubt that through collaboration and innovation we can develop systems that will enable us to meet the huge demand for good schools worldwide.

Mukund Patel is business development director at Sammon Group