Adapting old schools to new generations

The Foundation for Tomorrow's Schools was set up to develop and upgrade Malta's state schools over an eight-year period, at a cost of Lm60 million, after a report deemed schools to be inadequate and unable to properly reflect the standards required by the national minimum curriculum. Chairman Conrad Thake, an architect, was interviewed by Mark Wood about his views on school design and the work of the foundation.

The national minimum curriculum talks of an "intimate relationship" between physical conditions in a school and the development of student attitudes and behaviours. How does that relationship work?

I've tended to notice that when the school environment is very uplifting, modern and clean - take the most recently built school as an example, the state-of-the-art Sta Lucija - there is a big sense of pride among the students and the local community in their school.

Diametrically opposed to this is an environment never intended to be used as a school, for example the Nissen huts in one of our schools, where physical deterioration abounds. Here the students do not identify with the school, and they feel a great sense of alienation.

Ideally, what should a 'school of tomorrow' look like?

Primary schools should be connected to the local community, located in the town centre at walking distance from homes. They should have a very appealing environment in terms of colour, decoration, natural light, open recreational spaces.

Technology has a major impact on space. Computer terminals take up a lot of space, so many classrooms today are not large enough. At Sandhurst, for example, we are moving all the internal walls and creating classrooms of 60 sq metres instead of 40. They will have their own resource rooms too, which is a new concept stipulated in the NMC.

It is not just the classroom environment that is important, but also the unstructured spaces, such as the corridors and playground. A lot of these spaces in our schools are not user-friendly. They may not provide enough protection against the sunlight, for example, or they may not provide any benches and tables.

Landscaping is very important too. I feel very exasperated when I visit schools with large open spaces covered over with concrete, with no greenery and no seating arrangements.

Although this is getting into the realm of pedagogy, which is beyond the foundation's brief, I feel we need to overcome the formality, the idea that serious teaching can only be done in the classroom. An American educationalist I was reading the other day said: "We still build schools like warehouses". We need to question the model of what a school building should look like, especially with technology and IT having a big impact on design.

So is the foundation doing this questioning?

Well, there are various levels. First of all we have to be pragmatic. Most of our schools were built before the war, others in the '50s and '60s, and in the following decades there was little direct investment in the capital infrastructure. It is fine to question models, but in some schools the priority may be to replace the roof.

On the other hand, in the new schools we are going to build, the boys' secondary school at Karwija and the other four or five in the pipeline, we definitely have to question the design of the building and build in line with today's thinking.

At Siggiewi, which is a very typical block-type school, we are adopting an approach that has been called creative demolition - knocking down one wing and proposing to build a multi-purpose hall which could serve both the school and the community after school hours. It will be designed in an elliptical form and with new materials like steel and glass. The children should feel the excitement of going into a place that does not belong to past generations.

Again, to quote an American educationalist: "We can't educate tomorrow's children in yesterday's facilities". But we have to make do with the current stock of schools. We can't knock them all down and start afresh.

You have viewed many state schools in Malta. Could you give me some examples of the best and worst?

The worst examples are buildings which were never designed as educational facilities. Umberto Calosso is a case in point. It was once a brewery. The atmosphere certainly is not one of an educational facility.

Cospicua primary has 500 students who have to play in a very contained yard. In some schools I've seen children in their break time running up and down the corridor in an attempt to vent some of their energy, because the yard is so small it can't take all the students.

On the other hand, some of the other primary schools, such as the one in Kirkop, are like walking into a private school. The Kirkop school is very well presented, with a lot of natural light, decorated with children's drawings, and the children are happy and gregarious. It is not overcrowded, and there is a big open yard.

Some schools in Gozo, such as San Lawrenz and Xewkija, have very wide open spaces, and one does feel the difference: that the school is part of the environment beyond and that there is time both to learn and to play.

What are your priorities for this summer?

Summer is very much a time to focus on implementation, as we can operate at a fast pace because the schools are empty.

We have the run-of-the-mill jobs such as painting and plastering, but our first major project is finishing phase one of Sandhurst, completing a wing to the standard of tomorrow's schools and bringing back some of the students who have been displaced to a Sliema school.

In September I hope we will be breaking ground in Karwija, where excavation works will start. New classrooms are being constructed at Marsascala primary, and we have applications submitted to the planning authority for multipurpose halls and other facilities at Siggiewi primary, Mqabba and a number of others.

We are operating on different planes: new schools, extensions, refurbishment, painting and plastering...

What are the biggest challenges that you think you'll face in the work of the foundation.

A major one is quality of work. Our message is loud and clear: we want value for money, to adopt practices of the private sector when it comes to workmanship.

I have seen works which are very shoddy and would never be tolerated in the private sector, but because it is a government contract, they think they can get away with it. We are not going to work with the attitude that the cheapest tender will get the job and then they can do whatever they like. Contractors will start realising they are not dealing with the same practices as before. The toughest challenge for us is to change this mentality.