By Helen Clark

Institute of Education pound;8.95.(Order on 020 7612 6050)

Don’t Limit Your Senses

Ecophon Acoustic Ceilings, Old Brick Kiln, Ramsdell, Tadley, Hampshire RG26

5PP. Tel: 01256 855219. Free to schools

Reorganising Primary Classroom Learning

By Nigel Hastings and Karen Chantrey Wood

Open University Press pound;14.99

In the 10 years BO (before Ofsted), the annual report of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector always recorded evidence that one in five poor lessons could be attributed to the state of school buildings. Strangely, for seven years AW (Anno Woodheadi) this fact dropped out of sight. It was easier to blame teachers.

We are living through an unremarked period of great change in school buildings. For the past five years, the Government has girded its loins to catch up on the quarter of a century of neglect and deterioration that has depressed the life of teachers and the prospects of pupils. All schools now receive a devolved lump sum direct from the Department for Education and Skills for buildings refurbishment together with some local element through “fair funding” delegation. So the head and teacher without experience are often in the driving seat.

Improvement in the physical environment, whether through building works, artists in residence, or a school grounds project, provides a treasured chance for all pupils to learn. Moreover, if used imaginatively by the headteacher, it can trigger a sense of shared purpose and common successful endeavour among the whole school community. Any help in considering possibilities is welcome.

With this reawakening of interest in buildings in mind, these three books explore the impact of school building design and furniture organisation on teaching and learning.

Helen Clark’s Building Education is invaluable. She examines the whole range of possible environmental initiatives as well as covering the history and the research evidence of the impact on learning of school buildings, and the wider school grounds environment. Her section on the school of the future encapsulates all the likely changes and continuities, and covers the potential of the learning and communication technologies. Inevitably, in a well set out, A4-sized book of 34 pages, the treatment is general, but there are helpful pointers to further help and reading.

Don’t Limit Your Senses is a free promotional book. Anything free is worth having if you are a teacher. This volume of 150 pages is beautifully illustrated and examines the impact of sound in aiding and hampering the learning process, and deals with light and other environmental factors. It will be helpful in designing out acoustic and colour problems in new buildings. Apart from appealing to the anoraks, it has a fascinating section on the impact of buildings on stress levels.

What it doesn’t do - nor, sadly, does the much longer book from Hastings and Chantrey Wood - is examine the subtleties of environmental influences in school life, in particular the influences on behaviour from the use of music and the impact of conversation.

This last book focuses on school case studies of the arrangement of furniture and its impact on primary children’s learning. It is a topic discussed often in schools seeking to fine-tune their practice and extend the debate about the environment. The last section “Please take your seats” is a toolkit for approaching the issue at a school level. It will be useful to in-service trainers. The whole book is well grounded in the research evidence from Maurice Galton and Robin Alexander. Read it before buying, unless you are in higher education and are a researcher.

Tim Brighouse

Tim Brighouse is former chief education officer for Birmingham