Description

Thomas Deacon Academy in Peterborough is one of England’s flagship academy
schools. At the time it was also the most expensive new state funded school in
the country. One of the educational concepts behind Academies involves a key
specialism that distinguishes the school, in this case mathematics and science
(while a focus on business and enterprise would be a more usual emphasis for
academies.) However, Thomas Deacon is given further status by departing from a
conventional model of education in secondary schools in favour of a university
type environment with lectures, seminars and tutorials. This school feels more
like the headquarters of a large company rather than an academy school. It is an
organically shaped steel and glass building surrounded by mature trees and
landscaping. Two entrances are linked by a central concourse, which directs
circulation toward the central resource centre and social amenities, and creates
a natural focus for meeting and informal learning. The undulating glass and
steel roof over the central concourse unifies the architectural design, while
providing natural daylight, acoustic control and ventilation to the main space.
The triangular geometry of the roof and its innovative structure will hopefully
‘inspire students to reflect on the Academy’s specialised subjects of
mathematics and science.’ This is clearly the most striking design feature of
the building, reminiscent of a similar roof soffit treatment in Foster and
Partner’s famous tree-like trusses of Stansted Airport.

Thomas Deacon Academy has 2200 students aged between 11–19 years and joins three
previous schools together in one super school. John Hinch, head of the art
department when the school opened was quoted as saying: ‘The different cultures
that the three predecessor schools represented have come together more
harmoniously than we could have imagined.’ The scale is vast, at 19,000m2 and
some teachers struggled with the sheer size of the school; no one had brought
three schools together before. ‘”It was a shock to begin with,’” says Rachel
Baker, 18, the school’s headgirl. She says it feels so much bigger, with 2200
pupils, than the three schools it subsumed. “The facilities are 10 times better
though. There’s a computer for nearly everyone.”’

The school is clearly designed to resemble an adult workplace and the teaching
methods, involving small group teaching and project-based team working were
controversial when first introduced. However, it matches the more corporate feel
of the school. To break down the scale of the building, the architects divided
the academy into six smaller units, one for each of the ‘colleges’ that form the
basis of the school’s educational structure. Each college consists of a V-shaped
ribbon of classrooms, formed around a three-storey central sheltered space that
is the heart of each college and key to the educational and design concept.

The classrooms have either fully glazed fronts or open-plan spaces, so that you
can see what’s happening around the school from inside those spaces. An art
gallery sits at the top of the cloud-shaped building; a dance studio at the
bottom. Pupils describe it as ‘lighter and brighter’. Each of the six subject
area colleges, for example arts and communications, has about 300 pupils, aged
11-19, its own reception, a showcase area for work, and a specific colour for
the school ties the students wear. The college system is seen as one of the
academy’s ‘founding factors for success’. Students feel like they belong to
somewhere.

More radically, the headteacher is called the ‘CEO’ and some of the teachers are
‘directors’, for example the director of innovation. There is a boardroom, where
pupils discuss ‘school business’ sitting on leather seats and learning to use
the conference call telephone system. There are no bells, no formal break times,
no registers and no staff room. The staff as well as the pupils seem happy with
this set-up. For staff, who are often neglected in a school’s spatial
configuration, there are dedicated places for planning lessons, which have
better resources and are more convenient than staff rooms. As a downside to
this, however, staff report it is more difficult to keep a team together as
communicating with other staff without a designated staffroom is problematic.
Each college also has a ‘network study area’ for social and informal and
collective study; allowing teaching staff to socialise with the students, and
encouraging more mixing of different age groups and mentoring of younger
students. However, despite these initiatives, pupils would rather go home early
than have a break, because break time is when bullying might occur, so work is
still to be done to make these informal learning spaces safe havens.

The university style teaching involves longer lessons; pupils have two 90-minute
lessons in the morning, half an hour of form time, then another 90-minute lesson
in the afternoon. Half an hour is taken out for lunch, but not everyone goes at
the same time. Years 7 to 11 finish at 2.30pm, when sports activities start.
Sixth-formers might have classes until 5.30pm. This creates a better flow of
pupils and avoids chaos typically associated with everyone leaving together.
Pupils wear ID cards around their necks. They swipe every time they enter or
leave, go to the toilet, or attend a lesson. If a pupil is absent, a computer
will alert staff and their parents will be called. Students also report that the
90-minute lessons work well – with time to conduct an experiment and then still
time left to discuss it. The atmosphere resembles the one in a business rather
than the one of a school, which helps prepare the students for university and
the real world. ‘It helps get us to focus rather than mess around’, a student
explains. ‘”We still get to have fun”, she says. “It’s just more
structured.”’

There have been improvements in exam results in the academies but there is a
growing chorus now saying that the extra spending on academies does not
necessarily translate into higher results than at other new secondary schools.
The CEO of Thomas Deacon at the time of the school’s opening, Alan McMurdo,
thinks ‘that as a model it has a real applicability, particularly in urban
areas.’ He also says: ‘I’m more positive than when I started the job.’

Despite mature planting and trees the site is very small and there is no real
playground. Mr. McMurdo said the main aim of not having a playground at the
school was to help pupils’ learning. On BBC News he was quoted: ‘This is a
massive investment of public money and I think what the public wants is maximum
learning.’

On the other hand, writer and expert on childhood Tim Gill, who led an official
inquiry into children’s play, said the idea ‘”borders on inhuman”’ He claims
that children need to assume responsibility and argues that it’s symptomatic of
a way of thinking about children that we have to control and programme and
manage every aspect of their lives; damaging in the long term because children
need to have time when they take responsibility and make everyday decisions
about what they are obliged to do and what they want to do.”

Sources: Anushka Asthana, ‘No Break, no Bells in School of the Future’, The
Observer, August 26, 2007.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/aug/26/newschools.schools; Jessica
Shepherd, ‘How’s Business at Thomas Deacon plc?’, The Guardian, 4 March
2008, http://www.theguardian.com/education/2008/mar/04/newschools.schools;
Patrick Barkham, ‘Do Schools Need Playgrounds?’, The Guardian, 8 May 2007.
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2007/may/08/schools.uk3; BBC News, 6
May 2007.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/cambridgeshire/6629655.stm

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Originally published in: Prue Chiles (ed.), Leo Care, Howard Evans, Anna Holder, Claire Kemp, Building Schools: Key Issues for Contemporary Design, Birkhäuser, 2015.