The school was re-designed to allow for a flexible stage-divided school with a focus on the learning of each child. The school has undertaken some innovative approaches to design combined with an ongoing supportive CPD programme for teachers.

Personalised learning at Maglegårdsskolen

• The school focuses on ‘learners, learning’ rather than ‘teachers, teaching’.   It aims to focus on the pupil as an ‘individual learner’.

• There is a collective ‘we’ culture through a teacher team-based delivery structure.

• Success in learning is viewed as closely related to the development of a pupil’s self-respect, which is considered a prerequisite for optimal learning.

• Pupils are encouraged to take more control over their learning experience as they move through the school in order to increase learner motivation and autonomy.

• There is a blurring of the boundaries between living, working and learning.

Design philosophy

The main intervention in the design has been to the school structure, which has been modified from a series of departmental classrooms into self managed team home areas where a group of 5-7 teachers deliver to a mixed age group of 75 learners.

Throughout the school there is diversity of environments and settings to support individual preferences and exploration of new ways of learning. There has been a design decision to sacrifice traditional teaching space to support such diversity. Notably the corridors have been widened to accommodate ‘touch down’ areas at the expense of traditional classrooms.

Fluidity of space is important to the school; the movement of pupils around the school is logical with busy/noisy work areas located nearest to main circulation and the quieter/more calmer work areas located further away from circulation. An interesting aspect of the school design is that settings are activity specific and that rather than having a range of flexible spaces, the school has opted for specialist fixed settings that are fit for purpose. There is some flexibility of space but the school believes that the large diversity of settings allows them meet most learner needs and is preferable to multiple spaces that try to meet ‘all needs’.

Lastly the school has adopted an approach of dynamism which means they have an ongoing review of the use of space in the school based on the idea that needs and paradigms will constantly shift. As such the school effectively runs a ‘trial and error’ approach to its space use and pedagogy.