Medium-scale project - Freebrough

Freebrough Specialist Engineering College is an 11-16 mixed secondary school with approximately 891 students on roll, situated in the east of Redcar and Cleveland

It serves a catchment area of small scattered rural communities and small urban townships, many of which experience significant social and economic deprivation.

In January 2007, the school opened in a new PFI building, created around two large double atria. The building has excellent architecture, but little attention was paid to the more human dimensions of furniture, settings and scenery. The school was designed around the principles of classrooms and departments, and is restricted from more innovative approaches to its curriculum delivery and pedagogic organisation.

The school itself has existed since 2001 as an amalgamation of 3 small schools separated by five miles and experiencing a falling roll.

The school's GCSE rates, whilst improving, have been historically below the 30% floor target, with high absence and NEET rates. The Local Authority has proposed an Academy would create a more rapid and sustainable improvement.

An overview of the pilot's scope and deliverables
With Teeside University as the lead sponsor, and the Local Authority and Prior Pursglove College as co-sponsors, the new school will have a strong emphasis on transforming educational provision, and improving outcomes for students. It aims to make fundamental changes to curriculum, pedagogy and organisation, as well as the creation or a "can do" ethos for staff and students, promoting self-esteem and building confidence.

The new Academy will also benefit from a new enterprise centre for post 16 provision through BSF funding, however minimal funding has been provided towards capital cost for implementing the changes to curriculum, pedagogy and organisation within the school building.

Space for Personalised Learning provides a complementary perspective to the Academy transformation. Bringing a renewed focus on personalised learning to the table, it has an opportunity to make light interventions across the existing building at a settings and scenery level to support proposed changes, whilst also a complementary perspective on innovating with and delivering around those changes.

This pilot project, therefore, will allow the Space for Personalised Learning project to demonstrate to a large number of existing PFI schools the potential for educational transformation using devolved formula capital or other minor capital funding streams outside of BSF.

Crucial to success will be utilising the Academy educational visioning and strategy work as a foundation to the concept brief stage, whilst also challenging it and feeding into its further evolution. This is unique within the pilot school group because it requires synchronisation with two co-existing programmes - the Academy works and the BSF works, in order to deliver a new learning environment that can open afresh in September 2010.