In my role of roving FE foghorn, I’ve slipped a trotter through the doors of many a further education institution.

Some of these buildings were of sleek modernist design, all sharp edges and glass pods, others were crumbly relics held together by gaffer tape and determination.

The quality of teaching and learning, however, had flap-all to do with the quality of the organisation’s home. There was some wonderful practice and some dodgy practice taking place within both types of building.

But whether palace or shed, what these colleges often had in common was the reception area. The first impression of what sort of establishment you are entering.

‘No clues that any learning was taking place’

Imagine you know nowt about colleges and you step into yours for the first time.

Based just on the surroundings, rather than the packs of lanyarded-youths sloping by, would you know that you were in a place of education?

I was in the reception of one recently and I swear if I didn’t know, I’d assume I was in a small regional airport, at my allotted gate, waiting to be herded on board a budget airline.

There were next to no clues that beyond the whitewashed walls and the world’s most uncomfortable sofas, that anyone was learning anything.

The fact that any educational institution would attempt to disguise itself, whether through anonymous interior design or the choice of marketing language, seems like a batshit-cray-cray exercise to me.

‘A blank canvas’

It made me wonder what first impressions colleges such as that one (and there are loads like it) are trying to make, in opting for a purposefully characterless aesthetic.

Is it so that visitors or students can project their aspirations onto the blank canvas: “I want to be a *insert career here* and this is definitely the place to realise that dream”?

People surely know they are entering the building in order to learn to be that thing, rather than being in the place where that thing happens in a professional capacity.

Maybe the “don’t you dare tell anyone that teaching happens in this building” design of college receptions is another example of FE trying to communicate in the language of business rather than of education.

Trying to be universities?

Yet one more area where FE is dragged up in a costume of imagined “industry” to show people that we’re all about employment rather than learning.

But why? For the love of sweet baby Jesus, WHY? Is it just in case a Daddy Warbucks-like figure one day strides into reception and feels so at home in the DIY SOS version of “corporate” that he’ll make it rain with fifty-pound notes, straight into the college pot?

Or, are the college receptions that could pass as a Travelodge check in area a visual extension of FE’s historical low self-esteem and confused identity?

If so (punches self repeatedly in the face) please, PLEASE, can we move on? I’m boring myself even thinking about the bent-double “we’re just as good as universities” forelock-tugging.

‘Slap some emulsion over that shit’

I’m not asking for much in my dream reception area.

I don’t like: a) photos of the principal latching onto minor royals; b) photos of politicians in yellow hard hats pointing at a machine in the engineering department; c) random aspirational words or quotes stenciled onto walls.

You can slap some emulsion over that shit straight away. I’ll bob round with a brush and do it myself if you like.

‘A place of education’

My reception makeover wouldn’t be a dear do. If anything it’s a scruffing up.

I like to see photos of students learning within their vocation. I like to see students’ projects and work they’ve produced on display.

I like to see posters or flyers for student activity groups and local events. I like visual reassurance that this organisation is a vibrant, living, evolving space.

I like to know that it’s a place of education. But first and foremost I’d like to walk into a college and feel welcome. Admittedly that isn’t always about the decor.

Sarah Simons works in colleges and adult community education in the East Midlands and is the director of UKFEchat. She tweets @MrsSarahSimons