“The future doesn’t just happen. We are building it, and we are building it all the time.”
– Hannah Fry
It is all too easy to forget that we as a school exist within a local community and environment, I’m certainly guilty of sometimes not looking beyond the school fence at what is happening around us. As a school in France, we are subject to a variety of guidelines and frameworks that define how we develop the campus, the way that we develop new spaces and engage with building projects aside from vital child protection and safety frameworks.
When it comes to interacting with authorities, we are fortunate in our local situation – we enjoy excellent relations with our local mayor M. Davin, and he and his team at the Mairie have been supportive to our requests and ideas. Currently they are looking at traffic calming measures in the area around the Senior School which could be a significant contribution to increased safety levels for pupils.
We engage with national policy decisions when required. Most recently this has been our response requirements concerning the energy efficiency of our buildings. The new regulations are calling on us to reduce consumption by 30% which on a campus (such as the Senior School) with a wide variety of buildings is a challenge, happily the Junior School is far closer to conformity. In the light of concerns about the environment, we are pleased to meet this challenge. Having made a considerable number of smaller changes we are now in a position to tackle major projects. Such undertakings require careful planning and preparation. To meet our energy targets one of the buildings that requires significant improvement is the Braille building on the Senior School site. Built as offices, like many of our buildings on the Senior school site, it has been repurposed and has served us well over the years.
Next year it will be re-insulated and re-clad and consequently we will “lose” it for a year. More details will be made available but in the short term I can announce that our senior English and Languages classes will transfer to the Junior School. Thanks to the timetable wizardry of Mr C, we will keep pupil journeys to a minimum, safety measures will be in place for campus transitions, and the Senior School lessons will not impact on the Junior School’s normal operations. The site itself will be inaccessible to the school community during the works and I’m pleased that our contractors are confident that the noisy work will be completed over the summer break so school will not be affected.
This project is something that we have to complete and it will be funded by the Development Fund contributions made by families when they enter the school. Alongside the redevelopment of Braille, we also hope to improve our cycle storage facilities on the Senior School site with the construction of a new bicycle park which will include a photovoltaic canopy which will generate energy for the school to consume.
This is an exciting and necessary development for the school. We are confident that it can be delivered in a manner that will not affect the normal running of the school. We will provide a greater level of information before the end of term.
