The logistical challenge for schools is enormous: how do you guard against the coronavirus in the bustling, close proximity world of a school?

Following government guidelines, most schools have opted for one-way systems, desks arranged in rows facing the front and staggered break and lunch times. 

But is that the right approach?

Coronavirus: Reopening schools safely

We caught up with two building design experts, Dr Caroline Paradise and Helen Groves, head of research and innovation and architect director (head of education) respectively at global engineering and design company Atkins. They advise a slightly different approach. 

Read more:

• Coronavirus: The science behind school reopening plans
• Safety measures: What is the most infectious place in a school?
• Reopening schools: What does ‘safe’ actually mean?

Tes: If you were a headteacher, where would your planning begin in terms of keeping ‘bubble groups’ and also ensuring that teachers are socially distanced?

Dr Caroline Paradise (CP): I think it’s important to consider the school day right from leaving home. How are pupils getting from their homes to the school? Where are the points at which the families will start to come into contact with each other, but also with high traffic areas in the surrounding area and with people not attached to the school? Our modelling shows that these intersections can be much further away from the school gates than you might think.

Helen Groves (HG): Yes, we need to understand that a school is not an island. When we have all pupils back, we are asking families to do something different (and there will be fines from the local authorities if they do not comply) and that action is going to impact on the entire local community.

As such, we need to have a collaborative approach to this challenge: schools will need to work with local authorities, transport companies and local communities to find a way of keeping everyone safe.

That’s interesting - most schools will begin their planning at the exit and entry points to the school site. Will that stage also need that collaborative planning?

CP: Exit and entry points are likely to be a huge issue. Most schools have single points of entry/exit for safeguarding reasons, but in the current context that creates challenges.

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Particularly in primary, parents tend to congregate around the school gates, waiting for their children as they quite rightly want to ensure their children go into and come home from school safely.

Now, we can stagger arrival and exit times - as most schools have started to do - but, as many teachers will tell you, the congregation still happens but just outside the gates, not inside the school site.

That also presents a safety risk if the school is on a busy road, and a health risk as the research is telling us that it is the parents who need to socially distance most.

HG: Creating new access points is not really a viable solution - it might not be practical and it is costly. So, we need to find other solutions. Staggered starts and finishes will help, but you can’t dictate human behaviour, so we need to find ways of keeping families apart both inside and outside the school.

CP: That might mean utilising nearby park or public spaces, or it could be repurposing school car parks to enable safe queuing and congregation.

But one thing that might really help is to think about pedestrianising the roads outside the school or even considering other roads on the way to school that are bottlenecks for families and commuters.

It could make certain routes more viable for cycling and walking, which the government is pushing as a key aspect of active travel strategies.

This might only have to be for set periods of the day, but it could be very effective in giving families the space to remain distanced.

Some London borough councils have already done this for air-quality reasons, so it is possible. It just needs a collaborative approach.

How would you first begin to evaluate your site in terms of the resources that you have at your disposal when timetabling what children and teachers are doing in school in the context of a socially distanced, bubble approach?

HG: The first thing is to evaluate the site, not the buildings. We need to be innovative about how we use not just the buildings but the outdoor space - playgrounds, sports fields and other exterior spaces.

We did some work with the charity Learning Through Landscapes to identify plans that schools could make.

School leaders would need to look at outdoor space in a different way: where could temporary or permanent seating be erected? Where could new surfacing be put down to make spaces all-weather? Can car park areas be converted into play space or learning space? What temporary structures could be erected for weather protection? 

There are affordable options for both temporary and permanent changes to the school site to give you more room. 

CP: We then need to consider how you load and unload a building, how you get people in and out. It has to be effortless for those using it - if it isn’t, people will find it hard to maintain over an extended period of time.

For example, stating that children have to queue to go in an out of every building and classroom - it’s unlikely to be effective, particularly with older children. It has to be a system that is easy to follow and easy to use.

It’s for this reason that we would not advocate one-way systems unless it really is the most suitable option for your school. For most schools, one-way systems make little sense logistically or practically - they don’t have the corridors for it or the routes around the school are too complex.

HG: We need to think more flexibly. Think about the most efficient way to unload a building. It is not a one-way system. When the fire drill goes, people go to their nearest exit. We can use that to engineer ways into and out of buildings in a timely, efficient and safe way.

CP: Yes, and once they are in, it is about thinking differently.

Divide the footprint of your site into zones. Work out how far you actually need students to move between zones - how far could you keep children in the same room or zone? Does the science teaching actually need to happen in a lab? A lot of the time, it might not.

Then, if you do need children to move rooms, or zones, we are going to have to face the fact that we’re likely to need to timetable differently.

HG: Where a transition may have been five minutes, we may have to accept it is 15 minutes and that we will need the time to stagger departures and arrivals from classrooms or into playground areas or to toilets. And that rather than one-way, we timetable it so we can get groups of children moving in the most efficient, and safest, routes around the school.

CP: It is hugely challenging from a timetabling perspective. But we should utilise technology to ensure a more flexible timetable is possible, and we need to recognise that a tried and tested way of working may have to adapt.

And when they are in the classrooms, what do you think is optimal in terms of keeping a teacher safe, if we take it that social distancing between children is largely not expected in younger primary years and will be one metre in older year groups?

HG: Clearly, if you are not a from-the-front, chalk-and-talk teacher, then guidance from the government on using rows and teaching from the board is going to be a really difficult ask.

We need to ask ourselves whether that teacher is going to be as effective being forced into a way of teaching with which they are uncomfortable.

So, I think we need to think about classroom configurations that enable that teacher to be more natural in the classroom. It might mean exploring the use of technology to have the collaboration they desire - sharing screens, using more tech in the classroom essentially.

For younger age groups, I do think grouped tables are still an option and are arguably safer for the teacher.

Grouped tables can be arranged in such a way that the teacher can move around the classroom socially distanced from pupils. They can teach from the centre of the room, they can be more dynamic if they wish, and they can attend to children who need attending to (if the teacher wishes to break social distancing) without having to negotiate rows of children to get to that child.

So your overarching message appears to be that we need a much more context-specific solution at a school level, and a much more teacher-led approach in the classroom? With a lot of adaptation and flexibility along the way?

CP: Yes, I think we are going to have to accept that the ways things used to work might not work as effectively now, and that innovation and experimentation on use of the site, on timetabling and on pedagogy, will be the way forwards.