Grounds for Learning - Sir E Scott School, Tarbert, Western Isles

The workshop provided an overview of the ‘Grounds for Learning’ project, a design project in which pupils worked with a professional landscape architect to produce a masterplan for the redevelopment of the school grounds as a place of learning as well as a place of recreation. In addition to summarising the practical outcomes of the project, the workshop attempted to set the project within the context of A Curriculum for Excellence and demonstrate that the learning activities and outcomes of the project, and others like it, can deliver very effectively in terms of the four key capacities. The following summary covers the main points made by presenters Gordon Macdonald (Head Teacher) and Lisa Mackenzie (Landscape Architect).

• Initial proposals for improving the school grounds within the Council’s PPP project were disappointing. Car parks, some patches of grass and a few desultory plantings were to be the order of the day! Our Art Teacher, Christina Campbell, became aware of the Executive’s FlaT programme and suggested that the school should get involved. The programme’s focus and aims seemed perfect:

  ‘….to encourage school communities, education authorities and other stakeholders to work together to create quality learning and teaching environments which will….

  • help our young people develop and learn;
  • provide better opportunities for our young people to fulfil their potential;
  • inspire and motivate teachers and pupils’
  
  

  Involvement with FLaT looked as if it would provide a mechanism which enabled the school to work together with top quality design professionals and other agencies on the improvement of the school grounds. With the local authority’s permission we put the school forward for inclusion in the programme and became one of that year’s three project schools.

• Although the initial momentum for FLaT arose from the simple desire to make the grounds better, we also felt that FlaT had the potential to help address another problem we had identified through self-evaluation and that was the limited extent to which our pupils interacted with the physical environment. Like young people in other areas of the country, the world of young people in Harris has become the virtual world of Xbox and Playstation, mobile phone and MP3, Myspace and Youtube.

• Through working with Lisa and Anne we began to realise that the external environment of the school could be developed in ways that would improve not only its appearance and functionality, but also its capacity to support learning and to help develop positive attitudes towards the environment.

• In attempting to evaluating the success of the project for the purpose of the workshop, there were two key questions to consider:
  1. Was the project worthwhile in terms of its practical outcomes?
  2. To what extent did the project deliver valid learning experiences for the pupils, particularly in terms of the four capacities of A Curriculum for Excellence? 
     
• In terms of practical outcomes there were three basic objectives:
  1. Official recognition of the design proposal and acceptance into the Council’s PPP project.
  2. Securing of partnership funding to meet any shortfall from PPP.
  3. Project delivery
     

• The first objective has been achieved. The section on ‘Design Excellence’ in the local authority’s Information Memorandum for the Appointment of a Private Sector Delivery Partner, made specific mention of the work carried out at Sir E Scott and prospective bidders were required ‘to pay due regard’ to the design masterplan which emerged from the collaboration of the pupils and Lisa. Good progress is being made on the second, mainly through a major lottery funding application which is being developed by the North Harris Trust. Project completion is still some time in the future, but we are confident that it will happen.

• Can projects like this deliver a valid learning experience for participants? For sure. Setting aside for a moment all the more obvious cross-curricular contributions (Language, Maths, PSE/Citizenship, Art and Design, Graphic Communication, History, Geography, Science), an analysis of the project activities reveals a very strong relationship with the four capacities of A Curriculum for Excellence, as shown by the accompanying ACfE diagram on which the key activities and experiences of the project are highlighted.

You can find out more about this project at Sir E Scott School from Gordon MacDonald

Email – gmacdonald1b@fnes.net

Telephone – 01859 502339