SCHOOL BUILDINGS (Hansard, 12 July 1960)

§ Sir Frank Markham (Buckingham)

It is now already past midnight and I feel that I ought to apologise for detaining the House a little longer; but, in all truth, I regard this opportunity to discuss school buildings as one of such importance that I think I need not apologise. I very much welcome this opportunity.

The story begins by my seeing, almost inadvertently, some of the newest of the many schools which are being built in this country. My own reaction in looking at some of these buildings has been "Good gracious, how awful", or "How incredibly ugly" and I wondered if this view is shared about the few I have seen, or whether those few were due to the personal idiosyncrasy of one county architect, or whether it was general. In the last few months I have extended my investigations over Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire and, in a smaller way, Lancashire, and there is this same story of increasing ugliness in school building to such an extent that I doubt if one could find uglier buildings in this country built since the Army huts of the war years.

The curious thing is that many schools which were erected before 1957 were beautiful in balance and design. I wondered what was the cause of this change, especially as the change was spread over several counties so far as my observations went I finally came to the conclusion that whilst the county architects are held responsible for the external and internal design of schools, subject to certain conditions laid down by the Ministry as to cost, space, air circulation, heating requirements and so on, nevertheless county architects, with few exceptions, study carefully the bulletins issued by the Ministry which give them advice as to design.

To my mind, the most iniquitous of these bulletins is No. 33, entitled "The Story of Post-War School Building." It is wrongly named. This pamphlet should be entitled "Instructions to School Architects." It has almost become the bible of school architects.It begins 1358 valiantly. I do not think anyone would object to the preface, and I will quote a sentence to show the way in which the theme begins. On page 5 of the preface, we find these words: The vision and energy of a generation is often most strikingly embodied in the buildings it leaves behind. The post-war schools, like the mediaeval churches, dominate the local landscape. By their purpose and design they testify to the spirit of their age. They will show how fat we applied our imagination and resources to the future of our children. Noble sentiments these, and sentiments with which we can all agree. But when we look in this pamphlet at the sort of buildings that the Ministry recommends, we see the shocking illustration which appears on the reverse of page 9. There without question is one of the ugliest post-war buildings erected in this country, except perhaps for one or two temporary factories.

Why should this be? The answer is combined a little further on in this patruphlet, in which the Ministry makes it clear that it expects architects to eschew in their school buildings what we may call traditional ornament. It says on page 25: There can be no classical facades, ornamental cornices, gothic windows, stone dressing, rubbed brickwork or wrought ironwork. On the next page it says: It is only prestige buildings which can afford to appear in these habits. In other words, the Ministry in this most important pamphlet has recommended and advocated the starkest simplicity of design. Consequently we get these modern schools with apparently the flattest possible roofs, walls of glass—just a series of boxes with here and there a touch of funny colours.

I want to mention some of the schools that I have seen and which have been completed since 1957. I know the Minister is an exceptionally busy man, but if he could find time to visit one or two of these schools they would illustrate the point. In my own constituency there are schools such as Radcliffe School at Wolverton; the College of Further Education, also at Wolverton; Winslow, which is a modern secondary school; and Wing. Wing is redeemed by a lovely sylvan setting, but it does not alter the fact that this and the other buildings show rectangularity 1359 run riot, with an excessive amount of glazing, and nothing to break the severity of design, except an ugly chimney at Wolverton, or an eccentric superstructure like a hat box at Winslow.

If we go beyond my constituency we come across even more striking examples, such as High Wycombe High School for Girls, probably the ugliest school building erected in the last five years, some of the schools at Aylesbury, and Dunstable Girls' Grammar School and Dunstable Technical School in Bedfordshire. I do not know if the Minister plays golf. I hope he does, because it is good for Ministers of Education to take recreation now and then. If he does, and gets to Dunstable golf course, up on the Downs, as he goes to the fourth, fifth, sixth and even the seventh holes, he will see the beautiful panorama of Dunstable spread before him. As he looks over that expanse he will see the whole town, and spoiling the whole view are two buildings of extraordinary ugliness, Dunstable's two newest schools. I ask him to see this for himself, a panorama looking down on these monstrosities of architecture which masquerade as beauty according to the Minister's own handbook.

I am not going to blame the county architects entirely. I certainly would not dream of blaming the headmasters, the teachers, the governors or divisional executives because, when they put up objections to design, even to internal design, they are told by the architects, "This is what the Ministry wants" and the pamphlets are quoted in support. A lot can be adduced, not only from this pamphlet, but from all the other bulletins of the Ministry, that the Ministry's aim is to produce the simplest—and, incidentally, the most ugly—externals for schools today.

I want to make a suggestion to the Minister. I know it can be said: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and that this is only my opinion, but I ask him in all seriousness to withdraw pamphlet 33, go to the Royal Fine Art Commission, get it to look at these school buildings, and report. I see that Sir William Holford is a member of the Royal Fine Art Commission. Certainly what he has had to say recently about modern commercial buildings could be 1360 applied word for word to modern school buildings. I hope the Ministry will get an outside body, apart from its architects and development groups, to look at these schools. I suggest the Royal Fine Art Commission as a body which should advise the Ministry and its architects in this whole matter.

My second point is that one could bear this ugliness if it produced pleasant internal conditions and efficiency, but part of this ugliness consists in excessive glazing on the south side of classrooms. Here again the Ministry's advice is the cause. If hon. Members will again glance at this "Story of Post War School Building," they will find on page 33 the direct advice to architects that Every teaching room could be made to face south. There are diagrams on pages 36 and 37 definitely showing that every classroom should ideally have the maximum possible sun coming through the maximum possible glass, and of course on the south side. The result is to turn the classroom into an incubator, or, better still, a greenhouse. The children are treated not as children but as tomatoes. The more heat you can generate through glass apparently, the better according to these designs.

A school that was opened only a few days ago, Wing Secondary Modern School, is shown in other photographs I have here. The glass in some rooms goes right down to the ground. In other words, there is a complete wall of glass. This is going beyond what the Ministry recommends for the Ministry says the glass should be only from the sills up.

The point I wish to make is that this sort of glazing of the classrooms produces greenhouse conditions. We have had the case, to which I have already drawn the hon. Gentleman's attention, at Carnforth in Lancashire, which is one of the Ministry's prize schools and which has been used as a show place for visiting educationists from all over the world. So many children in this school were affected by heat just before Whitsunthat the whole school, 400 children was sent home.

The Minister will remember that on 28th June I asked him a Question about this. I understand that he is making inquiries, and I certainly value very much his promise to let me see the full results 1361 of these inquiries when available. But the plain fact is that any horticulturist. or anybody with any experience of working under glass, knows that the temperature gradient under glass goes up by 16 to 20 per cent. during the school hours of June and July. While the outside temperature may be 80 degrees, which is hot enough, the school temperature may go up to 95 or 96 degrees. This creates almost impossible conditions for the children and teachers too.

The partial answer has been internal blinds. Again I would ask the Ministry to consider the experience of horticulturists in this matter. If horticulturists want to moderate the heat of greenhouses they do not have internal but external blinds, which deflect the heat before it gets under the glass. Once it gets under the glass the temperature certainly rises.

I need hardly say that for generations now industry has learned that the valuable light is the north light. This light does not give a reflection from machinery, from the drawing board or from the typewriter. Schools have rejected the experience of industry. They have gone out for maximum glare and under-glass heat, and the result is that we have many examples of eye strain and irritation. Alternately, we get lethargy and somnambulance on humid and hot days.

I want to be constructive in this matter. It is not my purpose just to condemn. The suggestion which I make is that the Ministry should ask the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research to make investigations in schools on the subject of glare, temperature and humidity. I know that the D.S.I.R. has already made investigations into temperature, but I would like it to go into the effect of this extra glazing on internal room temperatures in the summer months, and this, again, with special reference to what one might call the minor tragedy of Carnforth in Lancashire.

My third point is that these new designs instead of being more economic than the old—if they were they could possibly be defended on the grounds of economy—actually cost more. I would refer the House to the Ministry of Education Building Bulletin No. 4 which is entitled "Cost Study." On page 137 of that Bulletin there is a very sound 1362 demonstration that windows fixed in metal sub-frames cost 22½ per cent. more than brick walls. It is extraordinary that windows should be more expensive than walls.

The Minister, I think, certainly agrees with me that if there is more glass than is needed, which is the fact today, we are increasing the cost of many schools unnecessarily. Therefore, in addition to obtaining greater efficiency by limiting the amount of glass facing south, my contention is that building economies would also be achieved. I ought not say that that money would be saved. Let me say boldly that we could spend this money on the children in better ways.

My next point is that every school in the country which has this new style of building—this glass shoe-box style with the maximum glare—has had to have curtains or blinds fitted, and these are expensive. The Ministry in its pamphlet o.n costs says that the cost of these for a primary school is now at least £500. For the Radcliffe School at Wolverton it may well be over £1,000. So much of this could be saved if the southern lights were limited and the northern lights expanded.

I ask the Parliamentary Secretary to consider the third point I want to make on this, namely whether money now being spent on blinds and curtains to control the glare, irritation and extra heat could not be spent much more wisely on improving the exterior of the buildings.

To recapitulate, I ask the Ministry of Education, represented so ably tonight by the Parliamentary Secretary, to accept three suggestions. The first is to submit the whole question of the external design of schools to the Royal Fine Art Commission. The second is to invite the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research to extend its investigations to include temperatures and humidities inside these classrooms and to investigate the question of glare, and their effects on children. The third is the cost investigation of curtains and blinds and their effectiveness when they are inside contrasted with when they are outside the glass.

I hope—I know that the Minister will agree with me in this—that we shall achieve the ideals which the Ministry 1363 has set out, namely, that we shall build schools which will embody the best that this generation has. I hope that they will show how far we applied our imagination and resources to the future of the country and not be, as they are now becoming, the ugliest monuments to the visual lack of imagination of our generation.

§ The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education (Mr. Kenneth Thompson)

I welcome the opportunity this evening of saying something about the school building programme and about the design and functional proprieties which have marked the progress of that building programme over the years since the war. I am grateful to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Buckingham (Sir F. Markham) for having stated in quite clear terms his views on the subject and the changes he would like to see made.

I can help best by saying at the beginning that there are one or two misapprehensions which can usefully be removed from his mind before we begin to consider exactly what happens in the preparation and building of a school. First, Pamphlet No. 33, from which my hon. and gallant Friend quoted, is not a directive in any form from the Ministry to local education authorities or to school architects. It is an historic account of what has happened in school building since the end of the war. It is not intended to have any force of recommendation or to contain anything in the form of guidance or precept for the future. It is an account of how we came to arrive at the situation in which the Ministry stands today in its relationship with local education authorities and with the architects who design, prepare and build the schools.

Nevertheless, the Ministry has a part to play in the process of seeing that the schools we need are provided where they are needed, in the numbers in which they are needed, and of a kind which will serve the purpose to be achieved. This is achieved by the use of three main controls by my Department.

In the first place, we exercise our judgment in the preparation of an overall building plan by which we are able to allot our resources among the various 1364 education authorities in the country so that they can see ahead to the points at which they will be called upon to start building the various schools which find a place in their building programmes. This programme is the first of the controls which the Department exercises. It enables authorities to see ahead and to know when their effort must be made in the one, two or three years before them, in the knowledge that, if they have a place for a school project in the building programme, there is very little, if any, likelihood of their efforts to be ready being frustrated or at a later date being subject to change.

The second control is that my right hon. Friend has to see that the schools which are provided in the building programme achieve at least a minimum standard in terms of functional efficiency in the building. He issues building regulations which say that a school for a certain number of primary children in a certain area, and in certain conditions, shall achieve certain minimum standards. These are simply the functional requirements of the school. They have nothing whatever to do with the design of the school from an aesthetic point of view. It is laid down simply that a school for a certain number of primary children, or secondary children, shall abide by certain minimum requirements.

The third control is that my right hon. Friend says that a school finding its place in the programme at a certain time and designed to accord with the regulations set out by the Department shall also be built within a certain ceiling cost set by the Department. The ceiling cost is not an idle, "catch-as-catch-can" piece of guesswork on the part of someone with a rather casual approach to the matter. It is the product of a great deal of research, much of which is referred to in the pamphlet No. 33 to which my hon. and gallant Friend has drawn attention. It is the result of the accumulation of a great deal of experience over a long time and intensive study since the end of the war. Our present experience, of course, is the distillation of lessons learned, often at great cost in terms of money and certainly after travelling a very hard and difficult road since 1945, which we are now trying to harvest for the benefit of all those who are engaged in the job of providing the schools we need.

1365 My hon. and gallant Friend is perfectly free to form his own judgment about what is a nice school or an ugly one. I am sure he will accord the same liberty to those who may or may not agree with him. I happen to take the view that many of our schools being built today achieve a quite remarkably high standard of attractiveness. Here, of course, we are dealing with the beauty which lieth in the eye of the beholder. It may be that the box-like structure which he condemns does not appeal to him. I know that it is possible to see too many of the box-like structures and to imagine that this is all that the architect can do.

I have myself seen in many parts of the country during the past nine months or so since I have held my present appointment many schools containing variants of the box-like structure, together with other structures having a different basis of design, which have produced a quite charming effect, some of them in areas to which my hon. and gallant Friend has referred in his rather general castigation of this type of architecture.

I am not, however, called on to express an opinion about the aesthetic end product when the school is built. My right hon. Friend has no power to direct an architect to build a school of a certain design. That is the responsibility of the local architect employed by the local education authority. I am sure it is right that it should be left to the free choice and decision of the architect, with his education committee to guide him and his local authority to be satisfied, to have these things done as they, the local people on the spot, exercising their own free and uninhibited judgment on these matters, would like to have them. My right hon. Friend's duties end when he has carried out the requirements of the three main controls to which I have drawn attention.

We are not alone in feeling that our schools cannot be so bad after all, having taken full account of the rights of the individual to form his own choice about what he likes and what he dislikes. My right hon. Friend is leaving this weekend for Milan, where he is to attend the opening of the twelfth Milan Triennale, an exhibition of architecture from Europe. At the invitation of the 1366 Italian Government, we are exhibiting one of Britain's post-war schools built to designs which have been the distillation of the experience we have gained since the war, of which we are proud and of which, I believe, the Europeans who will see it will be envious. I have seen it myself. It is an attractive design in my eyes and it is functionally highly efficient and satisfying to those who work in it.

I hope that my hon. Friend will have the opportunity of seeing some schools built either to that design or to a compromise between that design and some of the other designs which have gone before and that, whilst they may not be his idea of the ultimate beauty of form, they will at least cause him to moderate to some extent his general criticism.

My hon. Friend raised a number of other points, but I have barely time to deal with them. The amount of glass in the side of a building has nothing whatever to do with my right hon. Friend or his regulations, except in so far as the results of inquiries and examinations conducted by the research department of the building industry show that there should be a minimum admission of light into a school from outside. Two per cent. is the figure that is thought to be the right amount of light which should come from outside to the inside of a room.

All that we say to the architect is that he must design his buildings so that the windows he provides will be of a size and properly sited to admit that amount of light into the school. Whether the architect wants it on the north or on the south side is no concern of my Department. It is a choice to be made by the architect himself. If he puts it on the south side and it is subject to strong sunlight, the architect must provide blinds, either inside or outside at his own choice or decision. What we say is that within the building cost limits that we set, he must make it possible to design the building within the terms I have described and find room—