Midlothian Council – closing the educational funding gap

Midlothian Council has announced it will revisit its school building and extension programme in a bid to help close a funding gap.
At the full council meeting on Wednesday this week, councillors endorsed work officers are doing to adapt its Learning Estate Strategy.
Among measures that will be explored further is to make the planned new primary at Kippielaw a 3-stream rather than a 2-stream school, meaning there would be capacity for three classes in each year.
If given the go-ahead, this would ease pressure on King’s Park Primary and allow plans to refurbish the building to be considered at a later date. However, expanding the nursery space for early learning would go ahead as soon as possible.
Councillors heard bringing Newtongrange Primary up to a 3-stream school by extending into the park would be challenging. Instead, officers will investigate making the new planned primary at Easthouses, a 3-stream school. Newtongrange Primary would however still be refurbished and extended to allow it to operate fully as a 2-stream school. The nursery space would also be expanded as soon as possible.
To make sure there is enough capacity at Auchendinny, the council is also to look at extending Mauricewood or Roslin primary schools to prepare for the Glencorse Primary School consultation.
These alternatives would be instead of the proposal to replace Glencorse with a single stream primary school.
Cabinet member for education, Councillor Jim Muirhead, said: “We’ve huge ambitions to deliver a world-class education service for our children and young people. The Learning Estate Strategy gives the council clear direction in the short, medium and long term.
“However, we need to have solid funding proposals in place. We’re reassured that council officers are continuing to explore revised solutions to cut the funding gap down from in excess of £90 million to £74m. Any gap would need to come from borrowing and/or generating capital.”
The total indicative capital cost of providing all the additional primary and secondary school capacity identified in the learning estate strategy is estimated at £312m. Developer contributions to fund a significant proportion of this expenditure are currently estimated to be in the region of £199m. It is estimated Scottish Government funding would contribute in the region of £31m and the capital grant for Early Years Expansion can fund a further £9m.
Meanwhile, Midlothian Council has submitted a bid to the Scottish Government for investment to replace Beeslack Community High School with a new school.
The new facility, which would also be a Centre of Excellence in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) learning, is planned to be situated on the A701 corridor, adjacent to Roslin.
Midlothian Council’s cabinet member for education, Cllr Jim Muirhead, said: “This is a hugely exciting project, which we are working on with the University of Edinburgh.
“Our first Centre of Excellence, which specialises in digital industries, has been open at Newbattle now for the best part of a year. It is already garnering acclaim so we can build on our experience of successfully delivering that project. Fingers crossed, therefore, that this latest bid is successful.”
It is proposed that the funding made available to each project will be equivalent to 50% of the capital cost and that it will be dependent on the council finding match funding.
Cllr Muirhead said the identified site will provide the best possible location for a learning campus which will draw together the growing communities of Loanhead, Bilston, Roslin and Auchendinny.

Source: Scottish Construction Now

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Pioneering consortium could transform the way schools are designed

Richard Crosby, director of construction consultants blacc, looks at how a pioneering consortium could transform the way schools are designed, procured and built offsite

In the 1970s, the US car industry was severely impacted by Japanese car manufacturers who had perfected a highly efficient production system. The US car manufacturers came together and collaborated to develop a standardised approach to aggregate demand and reduce cost.

We in the Seismic consortium identified a tremendous opportunity to adopt a similar collaborative approach to improve the efficiency of school construction.

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Ambitious aims

School estates are often made up of mismatched, separate buildings developed over time to meet changes in demand, creating inefficient layouts. Every offsite manufacturer uses a different structural solution so new school buildings have to be redesigned every time to suit each system. Our view was this is an inefficient way of working.

The overriding aim of the Seismic project was to increase efficiency to reduce cost by standardising the offsite frame dimensions across the industry to create a componentised system for building new schools, beginning with primary facilities.

The aim was also to simplify the design process at the earliest stage – ensuring both feasibility and compliance with Department for Education (DfE) requirements in the most efficient way possible. Our solution would be to develop a digital version of the standardised DfE school clusters that would allow teaching professionals to assess if a compliant school building can fit on a specific site. This tool would use standard module sizes as a kit of parts for designing a school.

The project partners

All the partners involved in the project recognised its potential and each invested significant resources to ensure its success.

  • The original concept was developed by blacc, which also provided project leadership expertise.
  • The McAvoy Group and Elliott collaborated to standardise the structural components, with a view to expanding the market and de-risking offsite for clients. These partners worked very well together, successfully combining their offsite manufacturing expertise for the success of the project.
  • The Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC) coordinated the bid submission and acted as the catalyst to create the consortium. The MTC also gave the partners the opportunity to think beyond how schools have been delivered previously and apply more manufacturing principles to the construction of new schools, helping to develop more efficient processes.
  • Bryden Wood provided digital expertise and led the development of the technology for the configurator.

The project was funded by UKRI through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund and Innovate UK.

How to achieve greater standardisation in school construction

Standardisation and volume are always key for efficient manufacturing. If processes are more efficient and there are fewer components, labour costs are reduced. This means the focus can be on the quality of the materials and achieving best value.

The standardised grid and connecting solution simplify the design process and enable the second part of the project – the configurator tool – that allows a non-construction professional to configure a fully DfE-compliant school on a specific site. The intention is to speed up the early feasibility process.

Offsite framing solution for schools

The starting point with the framing solution was to engineer a single, standardised way for The McAvoy Group and Elliott to interconnect their respective modular building systems. An engineered solution has been developed to connect each of the steel frames that make up a module – and to interconnect each module vertically and horizontally to make up a school building cluster.

The result is fewer welded joints and fewer connections – which in turn means less steel, less weight, faster assembly and therefore reduced cost. The frame solution has been standardised around the building clusters developed by the DfE. It has a single width and height, and three length options to suit school buildings – using the same engineered connection solution.

The principle of standardised, manufactured components is that greater volumes will drive down costs and simplify procurement. For example, the DfE can pre-order a series of modules from any manufacturer that will be available ‘off the shelf’ for faster-building assembly when a site receives planning.

The benefits: Productivity, cost and environmental

By rationalising the design of the steel frame, the number of components has been reduced. This means faster module assembly in the factory – increasing productivity by up to 50%. Work on-site to interconnect modules is also more efficient.

The partners’ research has shown that the new solution significantly reduces the number of frame components and will, therefore, use 25% less steel. The reductions in steel components and assembly time combine to generate a cost-saving for these elements of up to 25%.

With fewer components, the weight of the modules will reduce by 25% with no compromise on structural rigidity – generating 25% lower carbon emissions for the offsite construction of an average 40-module school. This is equivalent to over 155,000 miles of car driving or 17 flights from London to Sydney.

A unique approach to achieve unprecedented economies of scale

The intention is to offer the series of standardised components freely to the market, with the original design being subject to a patent application. Wide adoption will drive down the cost of the component manufacture and increase productivity across the offsite sector in education and other sectors.

This collaborative, standardised approach will make it easier for clients to procure offsite, for the supply chain to manufacture components and for offsite specialists increase to productivity.

The Seismic School Configurator

The team at Bryden Wood has developed a web app that encodes the spatial requirements alongside guidance for DfMA. Game engine technology was used to build the configurator and to make it as much like a computer game as possible. Games such as Minecraft provided inspiration for the look and feel – the team wanted it to be different to the costly, professional desktop software that architects normally use.

A web app rather than a desktop application was created so the configurator could be as open and widely available for users as possible. This is a tool which is useful for architects who are designing schools in a conventional way and it will also allow a larger group of stakeholders to get involved. Teachers, parents and pupils can potentially design their own school.

An open-source approach

The Seismic consortium has open-sourced the app in order to help build a development community around it so that the maintenance and updates can be a collective effort. It is compliant with DfE planning regulations and has been built so future regulatory changes can easily be incorporated to ensure it stays current and compliant.

The team wants to encourage as many people as possible to get involved. Open-sourcing technology is often disruptive – this approach lowers the barrier to entry and helps to democratise the design process.

As a result, better schools will be designed and delivered more efficiently. The team hopes that this app will encourage more designers to engage and use it to deliver their buildings.

Seismic: A powerful example to inspire other innovative projects

According to Sam Stacey, challenge director for Transforming Construction at UKRI: “The Seismic project is a powerful example that the targets set out in the Construction 2025 Strategy are achievable. It is one of the first Innovate UK projects under Transforming Construction to be completed and demonstrates that this level of collaboration is the future of construction.

“The Seismic initiative has been a tremendous success and it has hit all of the targets for Transforming Construction. The project partners have demonstrated an unprecedented level of collaboration, which we hope will inspire other forward-thinking projects to help innovate in construction and produce more efficient, sustainable and affordable buildings.

“The focus of Seismic was to realise the government’s ambition for greater productivity in construction and this has definitely been achieved with the offsite and digital solutions developed by the team. We are in no doubt that these innovations have the potential to change the way primary school projects are designed, procured and constructed, helping to meet the rising demand for school places and increase capacity in the construction industry.”

Next steps

The benefits are already being realised in new Department for Education procurement frameworks. The team is in the process of completing testing of the frame solution. The next stage is a collaboration with steel fabricators to develop the standardised components and establish a supply chain with a view to making these available to the offsite market in the coming months. This approach will aggregate demand to reduce cost.

The aim is to develop a ‘product family’ for different types of buildings, such as residential. The team also has aspirations to ‘componentise’ other parts of a school building to be able to offer a whole school solution, including walls and roofs.

 

 

Richard Crosby

Director, blacc/Seismic consortium

Source: PBC Today

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Companies on the verge of collapse, yet chosen for major projects

How did Powys County Council (PCC) choose two companies for building projects that were on the verge of going bust?

A special meeting of the Audit Committee on Wednesday, will probe how PCC went about choosing Dawnus to build three schools and Jistcourt to build flats, when they were on the verge of collapse.

Earlier this year, both companies went bankrupt and this will delay the building projects.

The meeting takes place after the Audit committee’s vice chairman, and independent member, John Brautigam, held his own investigations.

He provided information on the collapse of Dawnus (Welsh for talented) which was used by the Welsh Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee at a meeting in June.

Mr Brautigam said: “We have agreed that the purpose of the special meeting would be to appreciate the vetting procedures and methods in order to identify any weaknesses and propose potential improvements.

“We cannot ignore the fact that there have been two significant apparent failures.

“In both cases we do not know if it was a failure or shortcoming of the system used or of the data put into it.”

According to some answers already given by PCC officers, the vetting procedures into Dawnus started in February 2018.

The assessment had been made – using data for accounts from 2015 and 2016 – which would have given PCC no inkling of what would happen.

PCC said that the rumours about Dawnus reached them in  July 2018 and at this point they asked for the 2017 group accounts.

These accounts show that things for the firm had started to slide with consultants, banks and the welsh Government asked to help their cash flow issues.

On Jistcourt, there is less information, but the number of resignations of directors would hint that the company was in trouble.

Mr Brautigam added that the key question on Jistcourt would be why the contract was awarded without a property bond in place?

Mr Brautigam said: “I am totally mystified that investigation of Companies House records which include details of accounts, charges and directors, is not an integral part of due diligence vetting process.”

At the meeting, head of finance, Jane Thomas, will be explaining  the Economic and Financial Standing (EFS) assessments for these contracts.

The EFS is a process to assess the bidder’s ability capacity to take on the contract alongside other criteria.

In March, Dawnus (Welsh for talented) went bust, the 360-pupil English-medium primary school in Welshpool was partly built.

It had been expected that the staff and pupils would move there for the new school year in September but the delay will take at least a year as PCC go through a new tendering process.

The last two projects, a Welsh medium school in Welshpool and a new building for an all-through primary and secondary school in Machynlleth, are still at the planning stage.

Administrators for Jistcourt were appointed on June 27 and PCC believes that work at the site to build 26 flats at the Old Bowling Club site in Newtown could start in six months time.

Source: Powis County Times

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Sprinkler Fire Safety System – Fire Brigade say design omission staggering

Sprinklers were not fitted at any London school or college which had fires this year, new figures have revealed.

Statistics showed that none of the 57 educational establishments in the capital attended by firefighters were fitted with the systems.

The London Fire Brigade (LFB) data covers blazes attended by crews at nurseries, primary and secondary schools, colleges and universities.

None of them which had fires up until July 25 were fitted with automatic fire suppression systems (AFSS), the brigade said.

It said only 2.3 per cent of the 565 school fires attended between 2014 and July this year were in buildings fitted with sprinklers. The safety systems were installed at only 13 of them.

LFB said it wants sprinklers to be mandatory in all new schools and for institutions to be retrofitted with them during refurbishments.

Its deputy assistant commissioner for fire safety Charlie Pugsley said: “It is shocking that we have been campaigning for a number of years to make sprinklers mandatory in new schools and retrofitted during major refurbishments and yet this year, every school fire we have been called to has had no sprinklers fitted.

“Sprinklers are the only fire safety system that detects a fire, suppresses a fire and can raise the alarm.

“Sprinklers save lives and protect property.

“Millions of pounds are wasted every year repairing fire damage in London’s schools when sprinklers could have prevented the spread of fire.

“This is not just about saving money; when a school is closed it disrupts a child’s education, impacts on the local community and affects parents by closing breakfast and after school clubs.”

The fire service said that sprinklers are especially important during the summer holidays when buildings are empty and fires can smoulder undetected, causing “extensive and expensive” damage.

Mr Pugsley added: “The easiest time is to fit sprinklers when schools are being built or refurbished.

“I find it staggering that such a simple safety measure is so easily omitted from the designs.”

The new data has been released the week after the 10-year anniversary of the devastating fire at Thomas Fairchild School in Hoxton, east London.

At the height of the incident 15 fire engines and more than 100 firefighters attended the scene and crews remained at the primary school for more than 10 hours, the London Fire Brigade said.

The school was closed for almost three years after the fire while it was rebuilt and the school’s 300 pupils were schooled at two different locations, it added.

A Department for Education spokeswoman said: “The safety of pupils and staff is paramount and schools are fundamentally safe places, designed to be evacuated as quickly as possible in the event of a fire.

“All schools are required to have an up-to-date Fire Risk Assessment and to conduct regular fire drills.

“All new school buildings must be signed-off by an inspector to certify that they meet the requirements of building regulations and where sprinklers are considered necessary, they must be installed.”

 

Source: Evening Standard

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Plea for ‘Sick School’ to be replaced

 

Parents of children at a “dilapidated” primary school – where a third of pupils claim to have been struck by respiratory illnesses – has issued a desperate plea for their “sick school” to be replaced.

The parent council at Broadford Primary School will meet with council bosses on Monday to discuss the state of the 1970s school building.

They claim its condition is “negatively impacting on the health and educational attainment” of children and staff, adding it is “a breeding ground for infections and respiratory illnesses”.

Results of a recent survey conducted by the parent group found that 32 per cent of current pupils have been diagnosed with a respiratory illness.

Parents have also reported that conditions of children had increasingly improved during school holidays and about 77 per cent of former pupils reported their condition had improved significantly after leaving the stricken school.

The revelation, coupled with a visit by officials in June, has forced Highland Council to conduct its own survey into pupils’ health at the school on the Isle of Skye.

Rosie Woodhouse, of Broadford Primary’s Parent Council, said: “During the holiday period, fellow parents report that their children do not need to use inhalers and that their asthma has shown a noticeable improvement.”

Harmful asbestos has also been found in the 44-year-old building, with a previous incident closing the school’s canteen in 2018.

Hamish Fraser, chairman of the Broadford Community School and Hub Working Group, said: “Broadford Primary pupils urgently need the Scottish Government, Highland Council and Broadford Primary to work together if we are to prioritise the health and safety of our children and staff.”

Parent council members also claim adverse medical effects forced one former teacher into early retirement after developing health issues while working at Broadford, but that they were able to resume work at another school following the change of workplace.

A Highland Council spokesman said the authority is committed to improving the school within budget constraints, and that asbestos management plans are in place.

A Scottish Government spokeswoman said they “recognise the understandable concern” of parents, adding that responsibility for the building lies with the Highland Council after being awarded £63 million of the £1.8 billion Schools for the Future programme.

Broadford Primary School is one of 11 earmarked for development amid the next round of funding from the Scottish Government.

The school has been added to the list of facilities Highland Council deems to be in need of urgent investment.

Scottish Ministers announced a further £1 billion schools investment programme in November, with a new Learning Estate Strategy to be published next month.

Included on the list of priority schools by Highland Council are: A new campus in Tain for ages 3-18, Nairn Academy, Fortrose Academy, Alness Primary, Beauly Primary, Broadford Primary, Dunvegan Primary, Invergordon Primary, Kiltearn Primary, Tarradale Primary, and St Clements special school.

Source: The Scotsman

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Green Light hoped for by Derbyshire School

A brand new multi-million-pound building has been planned for a Derby secondary school.

Larger numbers of children attending Chellaston Academy combined with an increase in housebuilding in the area means the school requires additional space.

To cope, the Swarkestone Road school wants to build a two-storey multi-use hall for assemblies, teaching, training and performances.

The hall would cost some £4.1 million.

The school currently has a capacity of 1,325 places for year groups seven to 11 and admits 265 new pupils each year. With the sixth form included, the total number of pupils is around 1,670.

If a planning application for the new hall gets the go-ahead, then the admission number for year seven would rise to 300 pupils.

The design and access statement submitted to the city council reveals that the new building will also have additional classrooms to support increasing pupil numbers. It will also have a hard standing area immediately outside for PE and to accommodate pupils during break times.

The statement also highlights the need to re-locate existing sports pitches to an area south of the main school, which is currently covered in woodland.  A tree survey has been carried out to identify the state of the existing trees and decide which can be removed.

Consultations have taken place with local residents and the hard standing area was included as a result  “in order to reduce the impact on the adjacent residential houses”, according to the statement.

The school serves homes which lie in both Derby City Council and Derbyshire County Council administrative areas and so the burden of ensuring there are sufficient spaces at the school lies with both local authorities.

Funding of £1,854,000 has been given by the city council for the new building and another £2,216,000 is coming from the county council.

The money will come from section 106 funding agreed with housing developers to improve communities where planning permission for homes has been granted.

A total of 897 new homes have received planning permission in the school’s catchment area, which are expected to generate 139 pupils aged 11 to 16.

The housing developments are at Chellaston Fields, Kings Newton, Holmleigh Way, Woodgate Drive, Aston and Woodlands Farm.

The city council says the school will eventually be able to have a further revised admission number of between 308 and 342.

Chellaston head Kevin Gaiderman said: “Our new facility will provide internal sporting capacity and additional classrooms and meeting rooms. The venue will also provide us with an area to enable us to hold large assemblies and events indoors including bespoke presentation evenings for the academy.”

If the project is given the green light then the building could be in use by September 2020.

 

Source: Derbyshire Live

 

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The Battle for Saddleworth School finally won after a decade

The saga over the new building in Diggle has lasted almost a decade.

Supporters of a new £19m Saddleworth School can breathe a sigh of relief after the threat of another judicial review has been lifted.

The controversial proposals to build a replacement high school in Diggle were approved for the second time in less than five years by Oldham’s planning committee in February.

The saga over plans to build a new Saddleworth School has been rumbling on for nearly a decade.

Proposals to relocate the school from its current site in Uppermill to a new facility in Diggle were first approved by Oldham’s planning committee in 2015.

But it was then overturned by a High Court Judge in 2017 following a judicial review.

Mr Justice Kerr ruled the council’s decision was unlawful, stating that the initial committee had ‘never addressed’ the potential harm to heritage assets.

That ‘David and Goliath’ battle was led by community campaigner Keith Lucas, who took the case to court on behalf of the Save Diggle Action Group.

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After the second approval was granted earlier this year, headteacher Matthew Milburn told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that they couldn’t rule out a second legal battle.

However the strict timeframe in which a judicial review can be lodged after a decision has now expired – meaning the plans are free to go ahead.

Saddleworth North ward Councillor Garth Harkness said he was ‘delighted’ that a new school could finally be built at the former pallet site off Huddersfield Road.

He said: “I have always been clear from day one that I want a new school wherever the Education Funding Agency saw it as appropriate.

“It has been clear for some time that that place was Diggle.

“There has been a lot of strong feeling about this and at times I have been met with abuse. We now need to move on from this.”

Headteacher Mr Milburn had told councillors they had been waiting ‘ten years’ for a new school. 

He explained they were having to spend a ‘disproportionate amount’ of their budget in maintaining the school, off High Street, that had ‘passed its sell by date’.

Former head boy Joe Wheeler, had described the conditions as ‘surreal’, with crumbling plaster, leaking roofs and flooded classrooms, and tiles being blown off in strong winds.

Saddleworth North Councillor Garth Harkness outside the current Saddleworth School in Uppermill

Planning officers had argued that the impact to the heritage assets on the site of the WH Shaw former pallet works in Diggle – namely the Grade Two listed office building and clock tower – was outweighed by the ‘substantial benefit’ of a new school.

It was suggested that the listed office building could be used by the school to preserve its heritage, with the possibility raised of it being turned into a library.

Coun Harkness added: “Some people will not be happy with the outcome and there has been a lot of contention.

“We now need to make it work for everyone and deliver the new school.”

An off-site parental drop-off area, as well as two residents’ parking areas, highways alterations and works to the access road to the former factory site will also be created.

 

 

 

Source: Manchester Evening News

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CONSTRUCTION SCHOOLS TO ATTRACT TOMORROWS PROFESSIONALS

Highways England – the government-owned company which operates, maintains, repairs and improves the country’s 4,300 miles of motorways and major A-roads – is working to ensure there are enough engineers to help build the roads of the future.

And as part of its support for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) in schools and colleges, Highways England staff based in Penrith have been running ‘construction schools’ to coincide with its package of work which includes resurfacing, a new noise barrier and roundabout improvements along the M6 north east of Carlisle.

Almost 60 students from Lakes College in Workington and William Howard School at Brampton near Carlisle, attended the events with a key focus on construction site health and safety and an insight into highways engineering.

Highways England project manager Jobert Fermilan said:

The current shortage of around 200,000 workers with STEM skills is set to double during the next decade and it’s vital we play our part in encouraging children and young adults to look at engineering as an interesting and rewarding career. Without projects like this we risk not having enough surveyors, designers, drainage experts, bridge builders and other skilled construction workers to maintain and improve the strategic road network of the future.

As a regional STEM ambassador and project manager for the M6 scheme I was keen to offer local students the chance to come and talk about a career in our industry and take a look at a real-life scheme in progress. It was great to meet the construction specialists of the future and to pass on what a rewarding sector it can be to work in. There are lots of routes into the industry and the sector is expected to need about 1.3 million new recruits by 2024.

During the two events – hosted by civil engineering and tunnelling firm AE Yates – the students also got to meet construction partners in Highways England’s supply chain. Companies like traffic management supplier HW Martin, road marking specialists WJ North and resurfacing contractors Aggregate Industries – who demonstrated an impact protection vehicle, robotic road marker and resurfacing paver and roller – will have their own demands for STEM-skilled staff in future years. Students were also taken on a drive-through of the M6 roadworks between junction 44 and junction 45.

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Lakes College Placement leader Rachel Melton said:

Our students really got a lot out of the visit, especially seeing the real-life application of skills they are developing at college. We look forward to working with Highways England and its contractors in the future.

Year 10 students from William Howard attended a second event with a ‘women in engineering’ focus underlining the message that engineering jobs are not just for men. The students also got a chance to see how technology is helping improve the safety of road workers – by getting their hands on GPS controlled road painting machine.

Teacher Simon Ling who led the school’s visit said:

Our students are still talking about the trip. They all came back enthused about the day, what they had learned. For some it has helped cement in their minds the career path that they might follow after leaving school.

AE Yates project manager Ruairi Flynn added:

It was really good to see how keen and enthusiastic the students were to learn about civil engineering. We emphasised a lot on health and safety and explained how people need to be appropriately trained to work in our industry. We also explained the benefits of choosing a career in construction and how rewarding the construction industry can be.

The work along the M6 started in April with resurfacing and major roundabout improvements at junction 44 already delivered and only the installation of a new noise barrier around Todhills left to complete.

Source: Highways England

 

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BRICKS – A NEW CONCEPT FOR PLASTIC

UNICEF, in partnership with Colombian social enterprise Conceptos Plasticos, today announced it had broken ground on a first-of-its-kind factory that will convert plastic waste collected in Côte d’Ivoire into modular plastic bricks. The easy-to-assemble, durable, low-cost bricks will be used to build much needed classrooms in the West African country.

“This factory will be at the cutting edge of smart, scalable solutions for some of the major education challenges that Africa’s children and communities face,” said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore. “Its potential is threefold: more classrooms for children in Côte d’Ivoire, reduced plastic waste in the environment, and additional income avenues for the most vulnerable families.”

Côte d’Ivoire needs 15,000 classrooms to meet the needs of children without a place to learn. To help fill this gap, UNICEF has partnered with Conceptos Plasticos to use recycled plastic collected from polluted areas in and around Abidjan to build 500 classrooms for more than 25,000 children with the most urgent need in the next two years, with potential to increase production beyond.

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“One of the major challenges facing Ivorian school children is a lack of classrooms. They either don’t exist, or when they do, they are overcrowded, making learning a challenging and unpleasant experience,” said UNICEF Representative Dr. Aboubacar Kampo, who has championed the project from its inception. “In certain areas, for the first-time, kindergartners from poor neighborhoods would be able to attend classrooms with less than 100 other students. Children who never thought there would be a place for them at school will be able to learn and thrive in a new and clean classroom.”

More than 280 tonnes of plastic waste are produced every day in Abidjan alone. Only about 5 per cent is recycled – the rest mostly ends up in landfill sites in low-income communities. Plastic waste pollution exacerbates existing hygiene and sanitation challenges. Improper waste management is responsible for 60 per cent of malaria, diarrhea and pneumonia cases in children – diseases that are among the leading causes of death for children in Côte d’Ivoire.

Once it is fully operational, the factory will recycle 9,600 tonnes of plastic waste a year and provide a source of income to women living in poverty in a formalized recycling market. Nine classrooms have been built in Gonzagueville, Divo and Toumodi using plastic bricks made in Colombia, demonstrating the viability of the construction methods and materials.

“We partnered with UNICEF on this project because we want our business model to have a social impact. By turning plastic pollution into an opportunity, we want to help lift women out of poverty and leave a better world for children,” said Isabel Cristina Gamez, Co-Founder and CEO, Conceptos Plasticos.

The bricks will be made from 100 per cent plastic and are fire resistant. They are 40 per cent cheaper, 20 per cent lighter and will last hundreds of years longer than conventional building materials. They are also waterproof, well insulated and designed to resist heavy wind.

Alongside investment to build in Côte d’Ivoire, plans are also under way to scale this project to other countries in the region, and potentially beyond. West and central Africa accounts for one-third of the world’s primary school age children and one-fifth of lower secondary age children who are out of school.

“Sometimes, embedded deep within our most pressing challenges are promising opportunities,” said Fore. “This project is more than just a waste management and education infrastructure project; it is a functioning metaphor—the growing challenge of plastic waste turned into literal building blocks for a future generation of children.”

 

Source: UNICEF

 

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DONCASTER UTC TO BECOME A LEARNING HUB FOR ‘STEMS’

The building blocks of Doncaster UTC are starting to take place as the main contractors have been appointed, just weeks after the principal was announced.

Willmott Dixon, the company who built the National College for High Speed Rail and XP School in the borough, are working with Doncaster UTC.

Garath Rawson, principal of Doncaster UTC, said: “The designs put forward by Willmott Dixon for Doncaster UTC really excited the project team as we look to provide a modern, practical and aspirational learning environment which will benefit students and staff alike.

“We want the new building to be an iconic town centre building that really adds something to the redevelopment of this area of Doncaster, as well as meeting the needs of our students who are embarking on an exciting journey in advanced engineering and creative and digital design.

“As such, the building will include a mixture of general teaching spaces and specialist teaching spaces to deliver the curriculum, including the digital aspects such as coding, and specialist engineering equipment for our students to develop key skills.

“A business collaboration hub will be created to allow students to engage with our business partners and employers, giving them the opportunity to gain first-hand insights into industry while still at school.

“Outdoor social, dining and learning spaces will be complemented with a Fab Lab, dedicated open plan engineering space, a MUGA pitch and an outdoor curriculum garden – the Engineering Zone. In addition, there will be a fantastic roof terrace open to all.

“We are looking forward to working with Willmott Dixon, who have a great track record of delivering impressive buildings that are not only fit for purpose but really meet the needs of the end users, in this case students.

“Their designs have already started to bring this project to life and we are looking forward to opening our doors to our first year 9 and year 12 students in September 2020.”

Doncaster UTC will be a school for 13-19 year olds led by employers to provide a vocational learning environment. With a core curriculum based around STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects, the UTC will provide an opportunity for students to specialise in engineering and creative and digital technologies.

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The UTC will be part of a new Multi Academy Trust called the Brighter Futures Learning Partnership Trust (BFLPT) alongside a number of primary schools and Hungerhill School.

Paul Stockhill, owner and managing director of Agemaspark Ltd, an employer partner of the UTC, said: “The appointment of the contractors for Doncaster UTC is another huge step forward.

“The employer partners are very impressed by the designs that include sports halls, an open plan dining space and flexible, open learning spaces to allow for creative learning experiences. There will also be a Post-16 study area for Years 12 and 13 students giving them the space to work independently.”

Source: The Star

 

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