<i>Technological, economic and social changes are putting growing pressures on teaching methods and programmes and pointing to new trends in tertiary education. Is existing infrastructure flexible enough to meet the changing demands? What new forms of facilities governance and funding are proving...</i>

Post Occupancy Evaluation is described here in terms of its aims, principles, benefits, methods, timing and results. Three examples illustrating the evaluation of educational facilities are given, followed by a summary.

The United Kingdom’s Department for Education and Skills commissioned a major study to examine the relationship between capital investment in schools and subsequent academic attainment. In particular, a key objective of the study was to establish, if possible, the additional effect in terms of...

PEB and the Ministry of Education of Portugal brought together 67 library and resource centre professionals, policy makers, educators and information technology specialists from 21 countries around the theme “Designing Schools for the Information Society: Libraries and Resource Centres”. The...

The design of this flexible school for early childhood education in Milan, Italy, takes into account children’s development and the different ways they experience space according to their age. The facilities will include not only a nursery school and kindergarten, but also a drop-in day-care...

Does Geneva’s Montbrillant lower secondary school, which has now been in use for one year, meet the objectives targeted when it was designed? Does the new school respond to the needs and expectations of staff and students? Questions such as these serve to evaluate the quality of a school...

In June 2004, the Scottish Executive published guidance on evaluating completed school building projects, <i>Building Our Future: Scotland’s School Estate</i>, as part of the School Estate Strategy; the guidance included a case study evaluation at an Edinburgh primary school (see <i>PEB Exchange</i>, no....

Extensive efforts world-wide have been made to develop performance measures for the physical infrastructure of educational institutions. However, this issue is not easy to resolve given the differences in data collection and management within individual countries and between countries. The...

The restoration of an historic school building in Battipaglia, Italy, will provide new public facilities and is hoped to boost urban renewal. The municipality of Battipaglia, in the province of Salerno, held an architectural competition for renovating the E. De Amicis Primary School and the...

The Intelligent Educational Training Station has been developed in Italy to meet emerging school building needs. The project, for schools from the primary to upper secondary level, proposes flexible architecture for an “intelligent school” network, and was developed by CISEM, the Centre for...