The following is a speech that was delivered last week by Patrick Nash, chief executive for Teacher Support Network. He was speaking at a roundtable on building design that was put on by Teacher Support Network, in partnership with the British Council for School Environments (BCSE), that brought together key stakeholders including teaching unions, architects, and the DCSF, to discuss the relationship between teacher wellbeing and the school environment.

Thank you Martin, and thank you to everyone else for coming to this event in a special week for school environments. It’s clear that our event title hasn’t just been an attraction to Pink Floyd fans and that there is actually a big issue that people want to tackle.

At Teacher Support Network, we’ve come to realise how crucial school design is to our work in improving teacher wellbeing.

For anyone who hasn’t come across us before, Teacher Support Network provide practical, emotional and financial support to teachers throughout the UK. Our team of qualified coaches, advisers and counsellors run a free confidential support service on the phone and online, which is available to any training, serving or retired teacher 24-7. Teachers can get help with anything from simple requests for information to high-level support with serious critical incidents. We also offer financial support to teachers in need.

But there is also a powerful proactive side to our work too. Analysis of our service usage gives us a clear indication of the problems that teachers currently face. We also run surveys to get more details on issues of concern. Whenever we detect a big issue that is troubling teachers, we will campaign hard for a solution; working with a range of stakeholders from Government committees and departments, to teaching unions and organisations like the BCSE. In fact, we recently worked on a sickness absence guidance, which was released by DCSF last week. We’ve even set up a social enterprise company – Worklife Support – which implements wellbeing programmes in schools. Their Managing Director, Carol Lynch, has kindly joined us today.

I’m sure Carol will agree that both Teacher Support Network and Worklife Support have always believed that neither pupils nor teachers are just another brick in the wall. More recently, we’ve also come to realise that the bricks of school buildings are hugely significant too.

Years before I started at Teacher Support Network, I had a brief career in ecological building. Too often, I’d come across buildings where short-run cost-cutting, compromise and lack of consultation had led to gross designs rather than Grand Designs.

It worries me that similar mistakes could be made today in what should be a historic time for British school buildings. We need to ensure that schemes like Building Schools for the Future – the largest capital investment programme in schools for 50 years - don’t join a long list of building investment failures. The reality is that, in order to build schools for the future, designers must listen to teachers, stakeholders and school communities today.

That reality was made abundantly clear when we looked at the results of a teacher survey which Teacher Support Network and BCSE jointly conducted last year. The results left us in no doubt that poor buildings damage both teacher wellbeing and pupil performance.

Only 12% of teachers who responded thought that their school building provided an effective learning environment; meaning 88% of teachers were being hindered by their buildings. 32% even went so far to describe their building as ‘poor’.

Some of the teachers’ comments sounded like they had been written in the 19th century. This is just a brief selection of sorry comments from a list of hundreds:

• ‘poor quality black board'
• ‘leaking roofs make the corridors dangerous for blind pupils'
• ‘cramped classrooms, poor ventilation - hot in summer, freezing in winter'
• ‘it is a lottery as to whether the seat a pupil chooses is broken or not'

You’d be wise to stay sat down – preferably on a seat that isn’t broken – before you hear some of the other findings.

87% of respondents said that school environments influence pupil behaviour, and nearly 60% said that their school didn’t have an adjustable environment to support curriculum delivery.

In short, bad buildings were damaging pupil performance as well as teaching. Again, there were plenty of shocking comments to match the stats:

• ‘Ventilation is poor – the students feel sick and dizzy in the summer months’ – ‘I can’t concentrate, let alone the students’
• ‘lack of larger spaces for more active learning’
• ‘decoration last renewed 1988’
• ‘prefabs rarely create the right atmosphere’
• ‘the whole building is very depressing’

If the findings weren’t depressing enough already, we also found that only 30% of teachers believed that their school provided the right level of safety and security all the time. One respondent said that their school was left open after children had gone home. Another complained that their school’s safety doors didn’t even shut properly.

The survey also revealed a number of more specific building-related problems that teachers were facing, such as poor ICT facilities and lack of space for PPA and relaxation. If you would like to find out more, a full report has been included in your packs.

Perhaps the most revealing question of all was ‘describe your dream school environment’. Anyone designing a school at the moment should take note.

One teacher suggested ‘fewer children, more staff’ and ‘cattle prods’. Another dreamed of ‘sleep cells’, whereas a different teacher had other priorities, simply craving ‘proper coffee’.

Most of the answers, however, were less humoured. Teachers’ dreams of bare necessities painted a damning picture of the schools of today. One merely wanted ‘shutters on windows’. Another made a plea for ‘enough equipment and resources for every child’. One even asked for a ‘staff toilet’ and also said they wanted ‘a classroom of my own – after 21 years, not much to ask’. I couldn’t agree more.

More than anything, the answers showed that if anyone knows what a school needs, it’s the teachers that work in it. Their criticisms were twinned with smart solutions that aimed to help pupils as well as teachers. Respondents repeatedly asked for better temperature control, so pupils and teachers weren’t distracted by uncomfortable environments. They asked for more use and regulation of natural light, so teaching resources such as interactive white boards and projectors could be used to their potential.

For obvious reasons, they wanted safe storage for resources, and they regularly dreamed of good acoustics and more flexible room layouts – so teachers could communicate effectively with their students, accommodate their needs, and vary teaching methods to make lessons more engaging. Teachers could tell that their school building was damaging their own performance and that of their pupils, and they were longing for improvements.

As well as dreams of simple improvements, teachers also had clear aspirations for their schools. For one teacher, five words summed up the dream school building: ‘space, light, colour, ownership, pride’.

As far as I’m concerned, there are two unquestionable conclusions that you can draw from all this. One – the majority of our school buildings are not fit for purpose. They must be improved. Two – Any improvements must be made to buildings as soon as possible, but only after the needs and ideas of the people who will use the buildings have been taken on board. This isn’t to say that consultation doesn’t take place – it does. Organisations such as Dialogue exist for this very purpose, and the Government has openly supported ‘communicating planning’.

My concern is that, in the midst of countless other pressures in schools, consultation efforts could get fatally compromised.

The phrase has become a bit of a cliché, but now really is the time to act. The Government recently announced an acceleration of the Building Schools for the Future programme. 12 BSF-funded schools have already opened, but 90 projects are still in progress. These are taking place in 72 local authorities, but soon, a further 76 authorities are likely to be given the chance to apply for funding.

By 2011, at least 200 new or refurbished schools will be opening each year. At that point, annual schools capital spending will have reached over £8.2 billion.

Big spending is one thing, but spending money wisely is another. We have to make sure that the right schools get the right support to improve their buildings.

One way of doing that is by responding to two key consultations that are currently taking place. Both the DCSF and the Children, Schools and Families Select Committee are running consultations on BSF at the moment, and I urge you to take part. The deadline is less than a week away, but this afternoon’s discussion has been designed to arm you with the answers that you’ll need. We’ve also included information about the consultations in your packs.

Last but not least, BCSE and Teacher Support Network will be producing a summary document of today’s roundtable to present at Labour Party annual conference on 22nd September. We hope to present it in front of the Education Minister, Jim Knight, and the Chief Executive of Partnerships for Schools, Tim Byles. We’ll hope to see you there too.

Whichever way you look at it, this week - and this afternoon in particular - is a unique opportunity to set the right foundations for better school buildings. Unless designers accommodate the needs of teachers, pupils and parents alike, we could see tomorrow’s children being educated in multimillion misfits. Unless we act, billions of pounds could fail to boost teacher wellbeing and pupil performance.

The planned investment is more than just another brick in the wall, and with so many campaigning opportunities immediately ahead, this afternoon is much more than just another event.

I’ll look forward to hearing your contributions. Thank you again for coming.