St Mary Magdalen School

This is a new Voluntary Aided 3FE Junior school that will replace an existing undersized and poor school accommodation. The school site is located within a densely populated area of Brent and borders onto two residential roads. The new school will provide modern educational facilities for 360 pupils while improving the use of the extended school by the local community through the use of an accessible studio and hall, together with group rooms and an ICT suite. The external spaces will be designed to provide a variety of play areas and areas for reflection including an amphitheatre, a special educational needs garden, a landscaped courtyard, and a multi-games area.

The age range of the students is 7 to 11 years and it is a DCSF Targeted Capital funded project through the Local Authority. The project’s date of inception was October 2005. The Design Phase ran from approximately January 2006 to April 2006. The expected date of completion is December 2008.

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Phase 1 Workshop at St Mary Magdalen School

The DQI briefing workshop proved challenging for some of the assessment group. The young children present found parts of the language difficult to follow. However, they did enjoy filling in the post-it notes, supplied by DQI facilitator, with thoughts about the building. These notes were later incorporated in the facilitator’s briefing report. There was some feedback from the assessment group offering constructive criticism about the workshop, but overall this stage of the process was clearly beneficial for the project. Evidence of this is reflected in the VERY GOOD RATING that the school received from a BREEAM assessment.

Experiences of the DQI Facilitator at the Briefing session - Andy Thompson

A pre-meeting with the head, some governors and the design team and DQI Leader agreed the approach to this briefing stage workshop. It was great that four pupils joined us and they all spoke up to make key points throughout the session. I encouraged them to capture all their thoughts on post-it notes. The follow-up report had a wealth of views on the existing buildings and what they wanted in their new school. Twenty five participants engaged in the workshop, representing the school, staff, the governors, the local and church communities, and the design team. In retrospect the size of the classroom was not adequate for the size of the workshop.

The workshop allowed the consensus of the assessment group to be recorded and project specific comments made against the questions. The workshop was 3 hours long. Much of this was taken up in moving through Functionality then Build Quality. This was not ideal as, perhaps the most interesting section, Impact, had less time and was somewhat rushed.

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In response to the feedback from the assessment group on the briefing stage workshop, the DQI facilitator worked hard with the design team to put together a PowerPoint presentation. This presentation was given before the assessment group filled in their responses to each section. It included statements made at the briefing stage workshop and a response as to how the project had addressed them.

A presentation was made by the Project Architect and by the Project Environmental Engineer. This was particularly useful in helping the assessment group understand how their building would work. There were also sample boards for materials (which people were encouraged to touch and examine closely), and coloured views. These were particularly popular with the pupils and really kept their interest alive.

The order of sections was altered and presented as follows:

1. Functionality
2. Impact
3. Build Quality

This stopped the effect of people "flagging" before they got to the most engaging section, and kept discussion on fairly technical matters short and to the point. This was a successful workshop. For many of the assessment group it was the point at which the project really came alive for them. The children were brilliant and made a great contribution. Two of the children were the same as at the briefing stage workshop.

Experiences of DQI Facilitator at the DQI Mid-Design Stage Workshop

I was pleased that a year later the school community had been persuaded to hold another workshop to evaluate how the design matched their earlier aspirations and priorities. There was a similar representation in the assessment group, many of whom had attended before. A larger space to move around in resulted in experiences that were altogether better for everyone concerned.

Again a pre-meeting with the head teacher, governors, design team and DQI Leader agreed the approach to this second workshop, learning from the first. I had excellent co-operation with the design team and using a PowerPoint presentation we carefully linked back to the previous workshop, reminding participants of their priorities and aspirations. The design team presented their design solutions, addressing Functionality first. The assessment group then gave their responses to the presentation using the online tool. Presentations and responses followed for Impact and then Build Quality.

There was altogether a feeling of engagement with what they were being asked to do and, I believe, some enjoyment judging by the discussion, the questions asked and the interest in the presentation boards set out around the hall. The feedback forms backed up this view.

General Observations

Both workshops took place at the school. The first was in a small classroom and this was very cramped and stuffy (although it illustrated why a new school was necessary!). The second was in the school hall, which was much better as it was spacious enough for people to walk around and view display panels, etc.

The school provided refreshments on both occasions which were very welcome. Children were well represented at both workshops (4 at each), in line with the school's ethos. In addition to the DQI workshops, the school held an open meeting to which local residents were invited. This was very useful in getting the local community involved and helped with the Town Planning process.

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