Schools are a vital part of a healthy and thriving community. They provide an important civic place for meeting and exchange and can operate as social as well as educational hubs. High quality, well designed schools create a sense of pride, identity and ownership for the communities they serve.
Well-designed schools can improve learning outcomes, health and wellbeing. They can improve comfort for students and staff, reducing the impacts of both the urban heat-island effect and greenhouse gas emissions, at the same time improving how schools work now and over their whole life span.
Design Guide for Schools
The Design Guide for Schools has been prepared to assist school communities and project teams in planning projects, as well as consent authorities and designers in assessing school development applications. It is also intended to help in preparing school proposals for complying development certificates.
GANSW has developed the Design Guide for Schools in collaboration with the Department of Education to support the design quality principles in the State Environmental Planning Policy (Educational Establishments and Child Care Facilities) 2017 – the Education SEPP.
Better Schools – Design Verification Statement form has been developed to demonstrate how you have applied the Education SEPP Design Quality Principles to the proposed development.
Environmental Design in schools
The Environmental Design in Schools manual has been developed to be an accessible and practical guide to engage and enthuse school communities to make sustainable interventions in the building and operating of their schools. It demonstrates how schools can incorporate environmental design principles and passive design strategies in existing school grounds.
The manual showcases only a small number of school communities doing exciting things to make a real difference to the design and operations of their schools. We also acknowledge and look forward to hearing about the many other schools that are also working towards better environmental design.
The Environmental Design in Schools manual guide prepared by the NSW Government Architect in collaboration with Schools Infrastructure NSW.
