Twenty-one things I would tell a school leader

1. 01

   Start from what learners should be doing.

   The activity is the brief. Furniture is one answer to it, and rarely the first. Learning-space patterns

2. 02

   Name the real brief. It may be the air-conditioning.

   The request is rarely the need. Ask who uses the room now, and why. Five rooms, five judgements

3. 03

   Fix light, air and heat before layout.

   They have the strongest evidence of any design factor, and they are the hardest to fix later. Evidence ledger: claims about learning spaces

4. 04

   Buy storage before screens.

   While bags sit under the tables, the tables do not move. The unglamorous levers

5. 05

   Regular shapes beat clever shapes.

   Squares and rectangles combine into more layouts than trapezoids and curves.

6. 06

   Everything the same height should line up flush.

   Tables that meet at one height make one surface. Tables that do not make two.

7. 07

   Mobile tables, yes. Chairs on wheels, no.

   Mobility should follow the teacher’s choices, not the chair’s.

8. 08

   Move the teacher’s desk and you move the front.

   A small mobile desk and wireless projection untether the teacher for less than a set of tables. The teacher’s desk is just furniture

9. 09

   Put power where people sit, not where the sockets are.

   Otherwise the sockets decide the layout.

10. 10

    Keep partitions under 1.2 metres.

    Low enough to see over, high enough to dampen sound and hold a sheet of writing.

11. 11

    If it needs a manual, it needs a routine.

    Anything that takes explaining will be used in one mode only, unless someone teaches the others.

12. 12

    Teach the layout call in the first lesson.

    A room that can be rearranged in thirty seconds gets rearranged. One that takes five minutes does not.

13. 13

    Borrow before you buy. Two weeks is enough.

    Two weeks of real lessons tells you what a catalogue cannot. Build as you go

14. 14

    Build for the first term, not the fifth year.

    Build for the uses you are sure of. Add the rest when real uses appear. Build as you go

15. 15

    One job per item, done well. Then maybe a second.

    An item that does three jobs usually does all three a little badly. Multi-functional furniture solves small rooms

16. 16

    Copy the reason, not the room.

    Another school’s room worked because of something you cannot see in the photograph. Best practice transfers across contexts

17. 17

    Choose technology for an activity, not an announcement.

    Name the activity first. If none needs the device, neither does the room. Technology makes a room future-ready

18. 18

    Write the specification yourself. Vendors will otherwise.

    A principle does not survive procurement. A clause with dimensions does.

19. 19

    Let students help write the rules of the room.

    A room that changes needs an agreement about how, and students keep rules they helped to make. The robot that became a social contract

20. 20

    Keep a design for a year before you redesign it.

    Redesign every term and you never find out what worked.

21. 21

    Judge a room in Term 3, not on opening day.

    Novelty flatters every redesign. Wait until it has worn off. Flexible furniture creates flexible learning

The room will outlast the redesign committee. Decide as if you will be the one teaching in it in three years.

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