A LESSON IN FLEXIBILITY

摘要

Voice-activated pencils, chill-out rooms with sofas and bean bags, fountains of soft drinks, robots for the canteen and helicopters to transport pupils to France for French lessons -when, a few years ago, The Guardian ran a competition asking schoolchildren for suggestions on their perfect school, imaginations ran wild. Unfortunately, as far as we know, none of these ideas have yet been taken up. However, schoolchildren are now getting more of a say about their own environment. Building Schools for the Future, a Department for Education and Skills' (DfES) initiative, wants them to play a key role in deciding how to spend the pound 40 billion allocated for the rebuild or refurbishment of all of England's 3,500 state secondary schools over the next 15 years. Likewise teachers, head teachers, school governors and parents should all be asked about the design of these buildings, states BSF.