Industry slams refusal to publish post-occupancy evaluation research on schools built under Labour government

Michael Gove鈥檚 schools delivery body has said it will not publish research into the performance of new schools built under the previous government鈥檚 school building programmes, in a move that has been slammed by the industry.

Mairi Johnson, deputy director of design at the Education Funding Agency (EFA), the Department for Education鈥檚 schools delivery body, said this week that the EFA had no plans to publish the post-occupancy evaluation (POE) research conducted by its precursor body Partnerships for Schools on the previous government鈥檚 黑洞社区 Schools for the Future Programme (BSF).

This is despite calls from the industry and the British Council for School Environments to publish the research, which provide as wide range of performance evaluations of the BSF schools, to help develop best practice in school design and construction and feed into future school building programmes.

Nusrat Faizullah, BCSE chief executive, said the POE was a 鈥渞eally really important鈥� and could provide 鈥渧ital learning鈥� for future school building programmes.

But speaking at a BSCE event this week, Johnson said: 鈥淚t鈥檚 no longer the intention to publish the POE work. It was done under the previous government and was an analysis of BSF schools and we are not building BSF schools anymore, so you can see why.鈥�

Architect Robin Nicholson, chairman of the previous government鈥檚 Zero Carbon Schools Task Force, said the decision was 鈥渙utrageous鈥� and said the DfE was throwing away knowledge gained under the BSF programme.

He said: 鈥淚t鈥檚 ridiculous. There鈥檚 so little published about the performance or non-performance of school buildings and when you have a serious piece of work done on that it is immensely valuable.鈥�

He added that in other industries, such the retail sector, it was 鈥渘ormal practice鈥� for POE to be used to feed into future building programmes.

鈥淭here is an amazing amount to learn and that knowledge is being trashed,鈥� he said.

One industry insider, who did not want to be named, condemned the move and accused the government of 鈥減laying politics with school building鈥�.

鈥淲hatever you think of BSF there were some good schools built and they clearly want to bury that,鈥� the source said.

 

黑洞社区 Future Education UK

Hear Mairi Johnson, Nusrat Faizullah and Robin Nicholson all speak at the BFE UK conference on 9-10 May 2012 at the Business Design Centre, London.

 

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