Hungary’s Belvárosi Tanoda Secondary School offers an informal, flexible environment and alternative teaching methods for students who have had problems in other schools. The Belvárosi Tanoda (which translates as downtown school) is a second chance school for students who have dropped out of...

The government of New Zealand delegates property expenditure decisions to each individual school. Such a decentralised environment creates a challenge for school boards and principals to obtain advice on the complex issues around designing schools. To inform schools, the Ministry of Education...

Describing primary schools in a small city in Portugal is an opportunity for an overall look at the evolution of schools in general as special public buildings. A look at four of the six primary schools in the city of Caldas da Rainha shows how these public buildings have evolved, what they...

Šoštanj Primary School offers a learning process which can enrich traditional forms of schooling. It demonstrates how a school, including its infrastructure, can influence family life and the environment, creating new social patterns and a local identity. Pupils and teachers are involved in...

In March 2007, the Portuguese government announced an ambitious plan to modernise secondary schools by improving the quality and usefulness of its teaching and learning facilities, while putting schools back into the centre of the community of which they are an integral part.

Open plan schools have been largely contested in Portugal; many teachers, administrators and even parents consider this model of schooling inappropriate and therefore a failure. Recently however the Escola da Ponte, one of the open plan schools that has survived, was recognised as one of the...

Scotland’s Building Excellence programme is exploring the implications of curriculum reform for school building design. It includes events which bring together teachers, designers, school managers and local authorities.

The design of this flexible school for early childhood education in Milan, Italy, takes into account children’s development and the different ways they experience space according to their age. The facilities will include not only a nursery school and kindergarten, but also a drop-in day-care...

The sustainable education campus project for San Agustín de Guadalix is based on an innovative concept of urbanism and architecture. The campus design and landscape aim to support training and exemplify sustainability.

Designing school buildings to respond to change is not a new idea. But perhaps what is different today is the kind and degree of change which we have to anticipate. The OECD is carrying out projects that can help in the planning and design of future educational facilities – exploring trends in...