I remember 5th July 2010 like it was yesterday
I remember July the 5th 2010 like it was yesterday. Michael Gove killed the Building Schools for the Future Programme stone dead; Gove would later confess to it as his gravest error. He didn’t just scrap a programme; he erased a collaboration between some of our very best architects, educationalists and engineers. They had come on a journey that started when the schools programme was being delivered by contractors’ PFI consortia, delivering ‘new old’ schools designed by fourth-rate architects. We—and I include the likes of FCB Studios and AHMM—wanted to create inspiring and effective 21st-century learning environments where the children of the future could learn to learn and not be in an exam factory. On a personal level, I had worked as a CABE Enabler, CABE Design Review Panel Member, Client Advisor, member of numerous contractors’ teams and the principal of my own practice who delivered a best-in-class school, Catmose College. This school building won numerous major awards and, thirteen years later it is still an outstanding learning environment and an outstanding school. This background brought me a deep and thorough understanding of the typology. But I was not alone; my competitors and collaborators were just as knowledgeable and passionate about delivering great schools. As well as being in fierce competition, we learned from each other. We wanted to design the best schools, and we achieved so much. Gove pulled the plug, and all that learning was binned: the CABE guidance and the School Design Review Panel consigned to history.
More recently, in 2023, came the RAAC roof collapses, schools literally falling downin real time. The response from the DfE was the current New Schools Contractor Framework, the Schools Building Programme CF21, central to which is the aim of achieving Net Zero and longevity. I have watched from the sidelines, curious. Schools are getting built; they look from the outside pretty dumb, soulless, and without much joy—and surprise, surprise, they are being designed by the same type of fourth-rate architects I had encountered 22 years ago in the early days of PFI schools. Had they learned from the significant body of work that was discarded by Gove 20 years ago? The honest answer—drawn from what I have glimpsed so far—is a big fat no. Lacking expert guidance, local authorities seem to want to create new old schools once more and headteachers are delighted simply to have a school that is not falling down. These new projects are being driven by a zero-carbon agenda, not an education-led agenda. The DfE and its leadership set an agenda for selecting its framework partners with zero carbon and building longevity as their key KPIs. So, it should come as no surprise that the school designs focus on these narrow sustainability-led outcomes rather than good design in the round.
In the days of BSF/CABE these designs would have been subjected to a rigorous design review by experts, focusing on 10 key points established by the latter:
1. A high-quality design that inspires users to learn and is rooted in the community
2. A sustainable approach to design, construction, environmental servicing and travel to school
3. Good use of the site, balancing the needs of pedestrians, cyclists and motorists, and enhancing the school’s presence in the community
4. Buildings and grounds that are welcoming, safe and secure, and inviting to the community while protective of the children
5. Good organisation of spaces in plan and section, easily legible and fully accessible
6. Internal spaces that are well proportioned, fit for purpose and meet the needs of the curriculum
7. Flexible design to support transformation, allowing for short-term changes of layout and use, and for long-term expansion or contraction
8. Good environmental conditions throughout, including optimum levels of natural light and ventilation
9. Well-designed external spaces offering a variety of different settings for leisure, learning and sport
10. A simple palette of attractive materials, detailed carefully to be durable and easily maintained, and to age gracefully
The schools that I have seen would, in my opinion, have scored poorly on each and every count, including the ones related to sustainability. So why is the DfE suffering from tunnel vision? There are apparently 30 architects working there—do they not have a voice? Jonathan Dewsbury, the DfE’s director of education estates, and Crawford Wright – head of the DfE design team – appear to me to be carbon net zero fundamentalists. Wright is interesting; describing himself ‘as a fully paid-up member of the awkward squad.’ He was at Partnership for Schools right at the end of BSF and then stayed in the process during the Gove-driven debacle, so he was not really a part of BSF.
Neither individual seems to speak of education or pupil outcomes, only net-zero. Don’t get me wrong, sustainability are stewardship are hugely important, but not at the expense of creating buildings that actually fulfil their primary function, in this case helping deliver an education and hopefully change the life chances of young people. The fundamentalism I describe is not faith; it is a fixation.
Measure once: off-site construction, hope sixty years later that it reaches its net carbon zero target without extensive retrofit. This programme is contractor-led from top to toe. CF21 hands the keys to consortia who adore system-building—flat-pack schools, rolled off a midland production line. Nothing wrong with modularity when you are building hospitals or flats, but is this right for children? The contractors claim that they know how to make great learning environments. But what they are doing is constructing hyper-insulated, airtight, deeply inflexible spaces. Fine, until the fourth heat wave in 2025 turns the classrooms into ovens. Sealed boxes overheat fast so the response will likely be retrofitted cooling and/or ventilation. There is nothing inherently wrong with modular construction, but it needs to be led by functionality, this progamme is not. Here’s my prediction: within five years there will be retro fitted chillers slapped, and any gains made by the SIPs construction will be totally negated. The framework contractors will have run a mile, or the money will have run out, and the kids will have to try and learn in overheated ovens. The DfE designed a selection process where the contractor won the contract on the basis of producing a SIPs panel and not on the ability to deliver great schools.
Worryingly, there is no incentive from the DfE for creative re-use and adapting our existing building stock. We know that contractors loathe it; it is too messy, too variable. Better to flatten the old and difficult, ignore embodied carbon, cram in a system building—inevitably meaning you do not make the best use of the site. The DfE asked the questions in the bidding process: Deliver net-zero and a sixty-year life. The framework contractors answered with a tick for both. But there was no extra credit for joy, or learning, or trees. Sustainability is not a spreadsheet line; it is the big picture: design an environment where kids will think more clearly, play more freely, stay curious. Lock them in grey sealed bunkers and you have built a net-zero problem factory, not a school. The DfE skewed the framework bidding process so contractors could bid on physics, not pedagogy. Dewsbury and Wright invented that logic along with their previous conservative masters, and they continue to run with it, so why hasn’t Brigit Phillipson done a Gove and reviewed the programme, she could make a difference to what is to me, a deeply flawed procurement, if left to continues, it will certainly lead to the construction of 250 schools that will be of dubious quality, and they will last for 60 years!
To the shame of the architectural profession, there has been no heavy weight individual with politic nous and heft like Lord Richard Rogers who understood that to make change you must influence and educate politicians that good design matters. We are world leaders in design, yet when it comes to public procurement, design doesn’t seem to matter, only thing that appears to matter is achieving the government’s narrow and easily measurable net-zero agenda, but what is the real cost? The contractors win; the pupils lose. If the tech fails, if overheating bites due to no external shading, if insulation fails, we will end up neither zero-carbon nor fit for learning, just doubly damned.
It is time for a pivot. Bring back independent CABE-style design review panels before the shovels hit the ground. The template is already there: dust off the CABE documentation and guidance. There are no excuses; the knowledge is still there; the hard-won lessons were learned 15 years ago.
Let us stop pretending that system-building trumps common sense; re-use, repair, re-imagine, retrofit where you can, adapt where it counts. If you must build new, build well: let educational outcomes trump net- carbon zero fundamentalism; look at the bigger picture.
Michael Gove regretted taking an axe to BSF. We should all regret the scrapping of CABE. Let us not give Bridget Phillipson the opportunity to regret this golden opportunity to improve the life chances of young people and the future of our country that they will inherit.
Jonathan Ellis-Miller 14th October 2025
Founding Partner Ellis-Miller + Partners
Professor of Architecture Riga Technical University
