£10 million boost for classrooms
The Department for Education and Skills has announced a £10 million boost to improve classrooms.
The money will fund a series of projects to design and build classrooms and staffrooms in schools under a new scheme, Teaching Environments for the Future.
It will be shared among 18 local authorities in England with the biggest beneficiary being Manchester, where three schools will get a total of £970,000 to create more ‘flexible spaces’, ‘break-out space’, informal areas and meeting rooms.
The scheme is meant to explore how design can contribute to the Government’s workforce reform agenda, which aims to free teachers of administrative tasks by boosting the role and responsibility of support staff.
The money will also help schools construct new e-learning and resource centres for staff and pupils and will provide an improved working environment for education and health professionals in special schools.
Schools Minister Stephen Twigg explained that the project will demonstrate how teaching environments could be in the future.
‘I look forward to seeing the development and the construction of these new teaching environments,’ he said.
