School designs 'seriously flawed', says watchdog

The Commission on Architecture and the Built Environment told MPs that pressure to build new schools quickly and cheaply has dominated at the expense of making sure classrooms work for lessons.

Cabe said plans for several London schools fell short of the "excellent standard of design" it expected.

Proposals for a sixth-form block at Westminster City School in Victoria were criticised on a range of measures and rated as "mediocre" overall.

Ministers want all new school buildings to become carbon neutral. Cabe said that nationwide, the flagship building programme was producing too many poor designs that failed on environmental grounds. Experts criticised designs for relying on "eco-bling" such as wind turbines and biogas boilers to demonstrate green credentials. The Government is committed to upgrading all secondary schools with new or refurbished buildings by 2020 at an estimated cost of £45 billion.

Cabe chief executive Richard Simmons said: "Quite often we are seeing the technical side of sustainability isn't strong enough. Simple things, like which way the building faces to make best advantage of the sun and natural light, are not necessarily driving projects.

We'd like to see greater improvements on that. We have got architects who certainly don't know how to design lowenergy, high-natural-light buildings."

The concerns from Cabe and the British Council for School Environments came in evidence to an inquiry by the Commons schools committee.

Schools Secretary Ed Balls was expected to be questioned about the programme by the committee today.

In a statement to MPs, Cabe said: "There can be a lack of emphasis on design quality at the expense of time and budget pressure." Many briefs for new buildings include the need for flexible classrooms where tuition can be tailored to individual childrenbut Cabe said this was "rarely translated well into the eventual design".

Ty Goddard, director of the British Council for School Environments, added that too often there wasno evaluation of how effective the new schools were proving to be. He said teachers and pupils must be more involved in design.

Tim Byles, head of government agency Partnerships for Schools, said improvements were being made to new designs.

A Schools Department spokesman admitted some early designs were not good enough but said Cabe and others were helping to improve future plans.

A Westminster council spokeswoman said changes were made to the Westminster City School plan before it got the go-ahead, adding: "We are confident we now have a high-quality building."