When the worst happens to your school building, what do you do? What policies do you have in place? What if – for example – the roof flies off following a inspection that gave you the all-clear? That’s what happened at High Tunstall College – but headteacher, Mark Tilling, wasn’t prepared to give into despair
No school business manager would contest the fact that top-quality facilities are vitally important for teaching and learning. Most importantly, a school must be a safe place; under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, employers have duties of care to employees, to pupils, and to contractors’ staff. This piece of legislation also includes the duty of care which contractors have to their own employees, school staff, pupils and other contractors.
Additionally, governing bodies have a legal duty of care to staff and pupils – in other words, the safety of everybody on school premises is paramount. So, what happens when something suddenly goes wrong, and it’s an expensive fix?
Mark Tilling, headteacher at High Tunstall College of Science in Hartlepool, found out the hard way; just days after a condition survey was carried out by the DfE – which rated the building as A1 – the roof collapsed.
Thankfully, nobody was hurt, but the damage was devastating and Mark knew that it was only a matter of time before something else went wrong; the building was very old, and the A1 rating was actually upsetting to the school, because they knew it wasn’t up to standard.
This was back in 2014. Mark was left feeling like he didn’t have a voice to complain about the damage, or the DfE’s rating, so he took extreme measures – he lobbied parliament for a new school – making the destruction of the roof the best thing that could have happened to the school.
“We had tried to secure funding through the conditioning the local authority provides, but it was never going to be enough,” Mark explains. “And, in 2010, when Building Schools for the Future was cancelled, we lost the new school building and facilities planned at that time. That was devastating.”
Unsure where to turn, Mark approached the then MP for Hartlepool, Iain Wright, and the former assistant director of education at Hartlepool Borough Council, Dean Jackson, for help. Iain helped the Mark secure a meeting with the thenminister of state for schools, David Laws. Things were looking up, all of a sudden.
Sunshine through the clouds
“Iain talked us through the parliamentary processes, and helped us understand the timescales we had,” says Mark. “Overall, he made us feel comfortable in a very unfamiliar situation.” The meeting with David Laws, and his advisors, enabled Mark and his team to state their case for 30 minutes, stressing that the building was not fit-for-purpose and providing photographic evidence of this.
David, though interested and sympathetic, couldn’t promise them anything at that stage, but Mark had hope; High Tunstall College was an important part of the Hartlepool community, but it hadn’t been cared for and younger people simply didn’t have the facilities they needed.
It was, however, six months before they heard anything more, but it was good news – the school had been placed on the Priority Schools Building Programme. In the short-term, this meant soldiering on with what they had, and patching up along the way – and preparing themselves for the worst, just in case. The upside was that the team was able to examine the short, medium and long-term issues the school faced, and ensure it had plans in place to make the environment the best it could be. “We ensured that safety was at the heart of what we did,” says Mark.
Finally, the funding was allocated. Initially, High Tunstall College received £17.1m from the programme but, thanks to the college’s intake rising from 240 to 270, an additional £1.3m was added from the Local Authorities Basic Need Funding. Contracts were drafted, and the design of a brand new school began, with help from the DfE RSBP North East project team.
“They really helped us to understand the process and, at all times, resolved issues that arose and made sure we kept to our deadlines,” says Mark. “This hard work has now resulted in High Tunstall having facilities to be proud of.”
A new dawn
In November 2019 the new school opened its doors to pupils. Mark describes this as “one of the proudest moments of my career”, and he remains in awe of the building. “It has given us a new lease of life. We extended the October half term by three days and, during that time, staff worked tirelessly to get everything transferred from the old school to the new.
“The buzz was unbelievable. When we opened the doors for the first time, we staggered start times to allow the children to have a look around and get to grips with their new classrooms.”
The three-storey building includes new science rooms, a demonstration laboratory, creative design rooms, design technology and food technology classrooms and a food demonstration room. It also benefits from a brand new learning resource centre, where students can learn independently. There is a new, four-court sports hall, a theatre and dance studio, open-plan cafeteria and all classrooms feature interactive technology.
“It’s a long way away from where we were back in 2014,” says Mark. “My advice to other headteachers would be that schools have to continue to press for what they want and need. By presenting our case, we were very well-positioned, but you must use the democratic processes. Relationships are key in processes like this.
“We’ve always been proud of the High Tunstall name, and now we have a facility that is befitting that name. Everyone is going to achieve better in the long-run.”
Make a plan
The DfE website states that schools should have an emergency plan in place, including details on what happens if severe weather hits and/or significant damage is done to the school. This plan should cover procedures for incidents that occur both during and outside school hours, and preparation should involve risk assessment, planning, training, exercises and reviewing and keeping staff and governors in the loop every step of the way.
Many local councils offer emergency training and the official incident alert team can be contacted at [email protected]<box out>
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