Scotland's Learning Estate Strategy: "Connecting People, Places and Learning"

Vision and Principles

5.1 Vision

5.1.1 The Learning Estate is wide and varied, comprising many different places and environments. These different places have to cater for a population of children, young people, lifelong learners and communities with diverse life experiences, needs and ways of learning. Thought must be given to all learning environments and what the user experience will be, in order to support and enhance the learning experience for all.

5.1.2 To help shape the content and direction of the future learning estate and to guide decision-making, Scottish Government sets out its vision:

“Scotland’s Learning Estate Strategy – Connecting People, Places and Learning”

“Creating Environments that Enhance Experiences”

5.2 Guiding Principles

5.2.1 The Vision for Scotland’s Learning Estate is presented as a series of guiding principles. These guiding principles are aligned with the ethos of the 2019 strategy and have been updated to reflect the drivers for change above.

5.2.2 The guiding principles are ways of delivering the vision and act as a framework for decision making on the nature, extent, location and other characteristics of the future Learning Estate.

Guiding Principle:

Education – Support and facilitate excellent learning and teaching to meet the needs of all learners.

Expansion of Guiding Principle:

Joined-up, collaborative approach – learning environments should be reflective of changing approaches to education and learning, and should enable opportunities for working across ages, stages and sectors. This should actively challenge structural inequality in education.

Guiding Principle:

Skills – Provide inspiring spaces to develop skills required for learners to positively contribute to communities.

Expansion of Guiding Principle:

Skills – consideration should be given to creating inspiring spaces that help to deliver skills requirements e.g. construction skills areas, maker workshops, project-based learning and strategic partnerships.

The Inspiring Learning: Space Toolkit is a useful tool to use when thinking how an inspiring learning space could be created in any educational facility.

Guiding Principle:

Wellbeing – Provide suitable indoor and outdoor learning environments to meet the needs and wellbeing of all users.

Expansion of Guiding Principle:

Inclusivity – the space should be welcoming and inclusive for all, including those learners from marginalised groups, whilst ensuring a safe and secure place, in reference to Universal Design principles for learning.

Equality – Equality in education should underpin all of this work, to ensure that spaces meet the needs of a diverse range of learners including disrupting racism and racist incidents and gender inequality. Spaces should aim to support the needs of local communities, e.g., laundry facilities, social dining spaces, family and life skills rooms, spaces that can be used for Breakfast/After school clubs.

Additional Support Needs – this could include neurodivergent design, sensory/biophilic design and trauma informed design.

Nurture spaces – these dedicated, nurturing environments should be designed to support everyone, including those who may be experiencing social, emotional or behavioural challenges.

Outdoor spaces – external environments should be considered an integral part of the learning experience and spaces should be designed to include covered external spaces, horticultural areas, rewilding zones, forest learning and performance areas that support outdoor learning, play and health.

Transitions – spaces should encourage and help to enable smooth transitions throughout the day and across the learner journey e.g. infant rooms in close proximity to ELC, shared common spaces, community campuses, school to college partnerships, partner links with FE/HE and industry.

Guiding Principle:

Digital – Digitally enable learning environments to support the delivery of Scottish Government’s digital learning and teaching strategy.

Expansion of Guiding Principle:

Digitally enabled – the estate should be future proofed with appropriate underlying digital infrastructure to enable and enhance learner collaborations.

Guiding Principle:

Engagement – Engage with the community to understand their local needs, including under-represented voices.

Expansion of Guiding Principle:

Place Principle – learning environments should serve the wider community and where appropriate be integrated with the delivery of other public services e.g. health, leisure, social care, libraries, in line with the Place Principle.

Guiding Principle:

Place – Provide the right facilities in the right place to ensure public services are inclusive, sustainable and effective in improving people’s outcomes.

Expansion of Guiding Principle:

Single Scottish Estate – consider the delivery of public services in line with the Single Scottish Estate programme.

Optimisation – the estate should maximise occupancy and utilisation, making the best use of existing assets.

Guiding Principle:

Data informed decisions – Inform good decisions through the use of clear and cohesive data.

Expansion of Guiding Principle:

Data Informed Decision Making – appropriate data should be collected to ensure decisions are made on an informed basis. e.g. help to determine air quality, energy efficiency, utilisation, occupation levels and capacity.

Guiding Principle:

Public Resources – Ensure best use of public resources to meet current and future needs.

Expansion of Guiding Principle:

Demographics – thought should be given to how indoor and outdoor spaces could be easily re-purposed, adapted or differently utilised to respond to changing demographic and societal needs.

Existing Estate – innovative thinking is required to develop environments to meet user needs and enhance service delivery.

Optimisation – consideration should be given to the size of the estate and what future demand is going to require.

Guiding Principle:

Condition – Manage and maintain environments in a good condition.

Expansion of Guiding Principle:

Condition, management and maintenance – each learning environment should be in a good condition. Works should be prioritised with the key emphasis on keeping buildings safe.

Whole life cost – the estate should deliver best value from both a capital and ongoing revenue perspective.

Guiding Principle:

Sustainability – Achieve low energy consumption, low carbon and low emissions.

Expansion of Guiding Principle:

Carbon – projects should be guided by principles of a carbon management plan. This could include the use of renewables, consideration of embodied carbon in design and construction, locally sourced materials and suppliers, net zero heat sources, electric vehicle charging infrastructure, active travel planning and in-use energy targets.

Learning for sustainability – Any project should be used as a learning opportunity particularly in relation to learning locally for sustainability. Projects can educate learners on adaptation to the changing climate through water management, planting for carbon absorption, planting for growing food and biodiversity improvements.