Safe Schools for the Future

Copyright: Architype / Jack Hobhouse

What makes a safe school for the future?

A holistic approach beginning with a robust fabric, efficient systems, delivered via a quality assured construction process, informed by learnings from the previous project. This design guide shares in-use and design insights from 17 built UK timber-framed primary schools with consistent outcomes.

Health

Fresh air, efficiently and consistently provided to all learning spaces, combined with healthy low-toxicity materials

Performance

Radically lower energy bills, with better indoor air quality, for better learning

Timber

Supporting the use of home-grown timber to reduce embodied carbon by 60%

Cost

Saving schools up to £50,000 a year, and informing lean capital costs

Download the Guide

This tried-and-tested guidance has been created to support project and design teams so the UK can benefit from more primary schools built from UK timber with the very highest standards for health and wellbeing, energy, carbon, and safety.

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Our Aim

Safe Schools for the Future is a free publication that prioritizes sustainable, high-performance designs for educational facilities.

By sharing tried-and-tested solutions with consistent outcomes, this guide seeks to remove barriers to seeing more home-grown timber primary schools being built across the UK.

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“Dear Prince Harry,

Could you come to our ECO school please? Our new ECO school is Hackbridge Primary School. Our school is clean. Our school has no rubbish. We have a pond. We have so many trees. Our school is made of wood."

Qihang, Pupil at one of the case study primary schools

"I only wish my children were able to go to one of these schools. Why aren’t all primary schools built like this"

Tom Coates,

Chartered Forester - James Jones

"A fantastic report that gives much-needed clarity in the current soup of confusion that is designing for fire resistance!"

Clara Koehler,

Architecture and Design

Woodknowledge Wales