Vermuyden School is a mixed community college for students age 11-18, in the East Riding of Yorkshire. We recently completed a major project to design and construct a new school building.
Vermuyden School students © John Niland, Vermuyden School
Giving students a voice
Before the project got underway, there was a wide ranging consultation process with staff, governors, management and members of the community. However, we felt that many of our students were unable to articulate their views effectively. To help address this, I asked the project architect from East Riding of Yorkshire Council to talk to a group of year 9 students who were interested in construction and the built environment.
Around the same time, Gillian Dyson of the architecture centre, arc got in touch to offer us a chance to participate in the How Places Work pilot. Through this initiative, we met with William Bird from architects Bird-Johnson and considered several different options for our How Places work project. The project we decided on was for the students to produce a design for the school - and present it to the school architects.
Vermuyden School students © John Niland, Vermuyden School
Visits to inspiring buildings
The students visited the arc building in Hull, which was designed by Niall McLaughlin Architects, and The Deep, which was designed by Sir Terry Farrell with phase 2 design by Bird-Johnson. Each student was given a support sheet to help them to articulate the things they found worthwhile in both buildings.
In a subsequent session back at the school, the students used the information they’d gathered through the site visits to produce a series of outline designs for the new school building. This consisted of a loose concept followed by a model based upon the actual site plan. Some of these students went on to join student focus groups for the project.
Vermuyden School students © John Niland, Vermuyden School
Visiting the site
Once building works got underway, our BTEC Construction students visited the site on a weekly basis, although initially they stayed behind the boundary fence and reviewed progress from the fringes of the site. These early visits were followed up by health and safety talks that provided a real-life view of how important health and safety is to construction and to prepare the pupils to visit the live site.
Once the superstructure had been completed and made secure, the students toured the site to examine different aspects of the work in progress. For example, one issue they explored was how services are put in place to provide a useable building for a school. On another occasion they examined the sustainable features of the building. The BTEC students were the first to visit the site after the contractor’s team, the headteacher, deputy heads and governors.
Enquiry based learning
The project provided an opportunity for the school to trial the enquiry based learning (EBL) approach on a mixed-ability group. We asked all of the teachers involved to make full use of any opportunities for in-context learning. I worked with our maths department – which was leading the development of EBL in the school – to assess the impact of this teaching method.
As well as applying the information they learnt through this project to their BTEC assignments, we tasked them with giving talks to their tutor groups so the whole school could have an overview of the development.
