The Kings House, St Luke’s, Broadfield House, the Wormholt … it reads like a roll-call of minor public schools. In fact, all are listed buildings bought by the taxpayer to house free schools, the experimental institutions championed by the education secretary, Michael Gove.
Ten of the first 17 free schools to be given the go-ahead have been bought listed homes, according to English Heritage. The Department for Education refuses to say how much it spent, but if the experience of heads who run state schools in historic buildings is anything to go by, the purchases could be criticised on both economic and educational grounds – particularly when budgets are under such strain.
Listed buildings are not cheap to remodel, repair or maintain – as Julia Deery, head of the grade II* Royal Liberty school, knows only too well. The poets Wilfred Owen and Edward Thomas trained as soldiers in her magnificent 18th-century hall with its colonnades and rustication. Now the east London building houses a comprehensive school for 600 boys – as well as a resident historian.
“It’s a beautiful, distinctive building and the students are very proud of its history,” says Deery. “But we get no extra money for its upkeep and we have to deal with English Heritage if we want to repair or change anything. This can be problematic. It took us more than two years to get approval for a back-up boiler and replacing just one flagstone in the entrance hall recently cost £1,000.”
“There are significant disadvantages to being listed,” she says, adding that Royal Liberty costs much more than other schools of similar size to heat and light. “We struggle to do anything to save energy beyond just turning the thermostat down. It’s not fair. We are having to pay to preserve what is everybody’s heritage.”
Royal Liberty was one of many listed schools poised to get cash for a major refurbishment through the Building Schools for the Future programme. But, while the refurbishment of the new free schools gets under way in time for their September openings, Deery’s repairs were cancelled when Gove scrapped BSF.
Woodlands in Coventry, a listed 1950s school, also saw its promised BSF money whisked away. The head, Neil Charlton, said at the time: “It’s not our children’s fault they’re educated in a listed and decaying site, and it’s simply unfair to them to allow this to continue. Despite our appalling fabric, we have driven results forward in recent years, but further progress will be limited by our facilities.”
Deery and Charlton are far from alone in their struggles with historic buildings. Matt Pendleton left his Derbyshire primary last July vowing that he would never again work in a listed school. Unlike Royal Liberty, Milford primary in the Derwent Valley is a modest structure. It owes its grade II status to its significance in the history of the industrial revolution – built as part of a model town by a mill owner who believed in educating his workers’ children.
Like Deery, Pendleton feels being listed is a punishment. “A lot of the finances are tied up in the building and you haven’t got the same control you would have in a normal school. When you are looking for work to be done, you have to forget best value – only more expensive options are viable.”
The bane of Pendleton’s existence until he left Milford was a leaning playground wall. Its repair became mired in talks between the council, the school and English Heritage. In 2007, a huge array of scaffolding weighed down by sandbags and covered with hoardings was erected to support the wall. More than three years later, it was still there. The children were irritated by the way it encroached on their play space, says Pendleton. Local people were irritated by the hoardings. He was irritated by the talk of spending “an extortionate” half a million pounds on it.
Pendleton had many other bugbears, including Milford’s windows. “They were a real mish-mash of styles and not very secure, but we would have had to replace them with replicas of the 18th-century originals – at a cost of about £50,000.”
Complying with health and safety rules can also be a headache. Milford’s fire escape was wooden with an asbestos roof. While Pendleton could ditch the asbestos, he had to retain the wooden steps. Then there are planning constraints. Even erecting a noticeboard for parents required jumping through planning hoops. “It all just drains you of time,” he says.
Ann Utting, headteacher of a listed Suffolk primary, knows what he means. Her school, Somerleyton, is charming, tiny and thatched. At its heart is an octagonal house that would once have accommodated her predecessors. The children love its quaintness, she says, but it is expensive to heat, difficult to find furniture to fit and the pillars get in the way of the overhead projector. More important, Somerleyton needs to expand and the discussions take “an extraordinary amount of my time” – time better spent on education.
Both she and Pendleton say compromises have to be made. “Listed buildings can be lovely places for schools, but they have to be fit for purpose and there has to be compromise when it comes to maintenance,” says Pendleton.
Tim Brennan, senior regeneration adviser at English Heritage, insists that listing does not automatically add to the refurbishment bill, though if particular materials are needed, or if the architecture is particularly sensitive, costs can escalate. “You have to take a rounded view,” he says. “You have the satisfaction of reusing a beautiful building and one that with a little imagination and investment can be made to suit what a school wants.”
Positive
One Surrey head is adept at adapting his grade I school to suit – and he is on Christmas-card terms with English Heritage. Noel Lellman, the head of Reigate Priory junior school, is overwhelmingly positive about his building – a glorious mix of former Augustinian priory, Tudor great hall and Victorian country house. “It’s a treasure chest – an amazing resource,” he says.
“The key is to work with the building and not see it as a problem. I’m here in my Georgian study with its immaculate ceiling, its chandelier and its marble fireplace … which is Blu-Tacked all over with pieces of kids’ work.”
Lellman’s year 5 pupils are based in three interconnecting wood-panelled Stuart bedrooms, one of which was used by Edward VII on weekend visits. Last year, when the over-subscribed school became six-form entry, he turned the old nursery into a new classroom. “Where two little girls played with wooden toys 110 years ago, we now educate 30 children with laptops connected to the internet. I see a link there. This is a living building and we are just carrying on after the Tudors, the Georgians and the Victorians.”
Lellman says he is lucky in that Surrey county council has been generous in allocating money for restoration. But he concedes he can get jealous: “If the guttering goes on a colleague’s school, they just go to Homebase. If I knew what our last piece of bespoke cast-iron guttering cost, I’d probably be demanding two new teachers for the price.”
And if he were setting up a free school, Lellman admits he would probably choose something more practical, low maintenance and modern. “I suppose I’d be looking at out-of-town commercial units … at the end of the day, it’s what goes on in the building that matters.”