Adapting school design for learning, health and wellbeing report

UCL Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering and LocatED have published their report on school design

The report emanated from the interdisciplinary project 'Adapting school design for learning, health and wellbeing, during and post pandemic', funded by the UCL Rapid Response 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.

Read the report