Creating the Right School Exterior

The exterior facilities available within a school are just as important as what you will find inside. The design and finish that you achieve can make a big difference to the first impressions that people have of your school. It can also help to enhance the educational facilities by offering teachers and students outdoor learning areas.

Designing Your School Facilities

It's never too late to change the design and layout of your outside space, but it's important to consider what you actually want to achieve before you start. For example, do you simply want the area to look nicer, provide classroom facilities or a combination of both? This will help you to decide how best to spend the available budget. There are a wide variety of different areas that you can choose from, such as fencing and gates, a canopy, bin store or lamp post shield, so you need to understand what will benefit your school the most.

A Safe Environment

One of the most important elements for a school is that the outside space is safe for their pupils and other people using the facilities. Improving the safety could include installing a perimeter fence and having access-controlled gates at the main entrance. You might also need to look at other aspects, such as the requirement for fire escapes and whether the existing provision is adequate. Using a lamp post shield in locations where vehicles are present can help to prevent them becoming damaged in an impact and weaken and potentially fall over.

Outdoor Learning

It's essential that children are able to learn in a wide range of environments, especially those who are of primary-school age. An outdoor classroom or space where lessons can take place could be of significant benefit to your school. This can be fenced off to make it a more permanent and usable site. If you want to make use of it in all weathers, you could consider fitting a glass or steel canopy above the area. This will help to protect students from the elements as well as the damaging effects of the sun.

Dedicated Sporting Facilities

Keeping fit and developing a healthy attitude to life are vital parts of the curriculum, and they are ones which some schools should be focussing on much more. As part of your redevelopment work, you could look at creating a dedicated sporting provision within your site. This can be achieved by erecting specialist sports fencing, which could also incorporate features such as basketball and football nets. When this is finished, it will provide pupils with a space they can use both inside and outside of lesson time.

When you've looked at the areas that are important to enhance your school environment, you can start work on developing the design and layout of your exterior space. Once completed, this will go a long way to improving the performance of your pupils as well as making it a nicer place in which to work and study.