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EVALUATION
BUILDING OUR FUTURE: SCOTLAND'S SCHOOL ESTATE
1 Introduction
1. This publication provides guidance on evaluating and learning from completed school projects. It is part of the school estate strategy Building our Future: Scotland's School Estate1 and complements other guidance published under the strategy, particularly School Design. 2
2. The guidance is aimed at local authorities and is intended to help them to evaluate how well a completed school building project meets the needs of the school's community, including students, parents and staff. This type of evaluation will inform the local authority's progress on the school estate, allow them to share individual project successes with stakeholders, enable them to identify issues to address, and inform the thinking and briefing for future school projects. It will complement other evaluation and review, such as progress on core facts, and contribute to school estate management plans, particularly step 6: monitoring, review and evaluation.
3. While building evaluations are principally used to assess new school projects, the approach can also be applied to existing buildings to examine their fitness for purpose and to identify priorities for investment.
4. The guidance is in five parts:
Section 1 Introduction
Section 2 What are building evaluations?
Section 3 Getting the most from building evaluations
Section 4 Case study
Section 5 Further information
5. Evaluating how well a completed school building project is working can be relatively simple. Pupils, staff and other users of a school will have their opinions on the building: the purpose of a structured evaluation is to provide a framework for gathering views that are suitably representative and complete and which, in turn, will inform appropriate action to address the issues raised.
6. The Case Studies3 highlighted some good examples of consultation, often in the early stages of a project. Carrying out an evaluation after the project is completed is a logical conclusion to the consultation process.
7. Feedback on school projects will provide useful lessons on individual projects. It can also assist continuous improvement in the overall design of schools and management of projects. Each local authority can learn from its own range of projects and, by sharing information with other local authorities and others involved in the delivery of school projects, contribute to rapid learning and improvement across Scotland.
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