Adapting school design for learning, health and wellbeing report launch

This event will launch the report emanating from the interdisciplinary project 'Adapting school design for learning, health and wellbeing, during and post pandemic', funded by the UCL Rapid Reponse Policy Advisory Scheme, 2021-22. The COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath has been posing unprecedented challenges to the UK population. Emerging research demonstrates that the pandemic lockdowns and restrictions across the UK, and the associated breakdown of routines and social networks, have severely affected children and young people’s learning and mental health, particularly in areas of already existing deprivation.

Building on the UCL Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment’s cross-disciplinary expertise in this field and working in partnership with LocatED, as well as undertaking knowledge exchange activities with the DfE Capital Design Team (CDT), schools, school design experts, and parents, this report sets out to scope the range and type of design interventions that schools can apply to better support pupils and staff both during and post-pandemic. It also considers how to enable longer-term building stock and educational support resilience, linking this to broader concerns, such as sustainability and educational equity.

Whilst this report centres on the impact of COVID-19 on schools and the implications for design adaptations that can support learning, mental health and wellbeing, we found that wider lessons can be learnt about the limitations of conventional schooling pre-pandemic and about existing space standards and approaches. The aim is not to provide ‘solutions’ but to scope what the key issues are, and to offer some alternatives to simply ‘going back to normal’ at school for our children and young people.

Speakers:

Jos Boys, Programme Director, MSc Learning Environments, Director, Learning Environments Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Centre (LEEDIC), The Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction (BSSC), The Bartlett, UCL

Anna Jeffery, Assistant Researcher, The Bartlett, UCL

Anna Mavrogianni, Deputy Programme Director, MSc Health, Wellbeing and Sustainable Buildings (HWSB), Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering (IEDE), The Bartlett, UCL

Lara Newman, Chief Executive, LocatED

Event details:

Registration 5-5.30pm

Event 5.30-7pm

Reception 7-8pm

Event ends 8pm

Room / venue detail: Lecture Room 1, Floor 1, HereEast

Accessibility: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/here-east/about-us/access

Read the Report

Photo credit: Karolina Grabowska / pexels.com