"Small scale" refers to the interventions a school can make at a "setting and scenery" level within its building to support the implementation of personalised learning, with a relatively small amount of money, from £60,000 to £120,000. The idea is to find ways of allowing schools to use Devolved Formula Capital or other sources of funding to help transform learning space.

This may be a one off intervention that aims to unblock existing spatial constraints within the building, or a ‘R&D' intervention to test new approaches to teaching and learning prior to a rebuild or remodel.

The projects address a number of different personalised learning approaches, and spaces, and cover two primary schools, three secondary, and an all-through / hard federation. They are located in Ipswich, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, Blackpool, London and Bedford.

See a large map of the Small Scale Pilots.

Each pilot summary contains a key explaining several key components of the project.

The first column will show whether it is a primary, secondary or all through / hard federated school.

The second column shows whether the space for personalised learning is being planned as a formal use, timetabled space; an informal use, non-timetabled space, or some combination of the two (for example, 60% formal, 40% informal).  Many schools will find surplus "informal" space less disruptive to day to day activities and operations to experiment with. However, creating "formal" space can have a greater impact on change management, since it is usually more tightly integrated into normal operations.

Finally, the six pilot projects have tended to be of three distinct types in terms of purpose.  Some projects are a one-off venture to unblock current spatial constraints, that will increase the school's ability to support personalised learning. These tend to have an impact on the whole school population.  Other projects have been research and development space, for piloting new ways to teaching and learning in advance of a future building project such as BSF or PCP.  These, too, may have an impact on a large number of learners and teachers within the school.  The third type is to support a core activity connected with personalised learning, affecting a smaller number of people but for greater amounts of time.