New School Designs Help With Zero Tolerance For Bullies

In a week where the national focus has been on anti-bullying, Manchester teachers and students have spoken out about how the physical design of their schools has helped them to feel safe and protected.

Manchester's £509m Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme covers the rebuilding or refurbishment of 33 of the city's schools.

In each case, buildings have been designed in ways to prevent bullying.

The more open plan designs allow for greater visibility along with key features such as:

• Wider corridors with better lighting and clear sightlines
• Glass balustrades in stairwells to increase visibility
• Open plan toilet layouts (with cubicles for privacy)
• Vision panels in all doors (except toilets) to allow rooms to be easily supervised
• Use of transparent, perspex shelters and cycle sheds, again to increase visibility

Staff offices built in key locations, instead of one centralised staffroom, so supervision can be maintained in different locations.


In addition to the physical design benefits, many of the schools have CCTV systems.

Cedar Mount High School in Gorton Education Village is one of the schools that has benefited from a £25m rebuild through the BSF programme.

Tracey Bishop, Assistant Head at Cedar Mount High School and also Campus Director of Gorton Education Village, said: "The Council has given us a wonderful new learning environment based on wide, open spaces which puts child safety first. There's lots of light and excellent visibility around the school. We always maintain that if children feel safe and happy then that promotes good learning.

"In addition we have CCTV, which can be used retrospectively in appropriate instances. The pupils know that if there has been an issue that needs checking we can look back over the footage. This is about making the pupils feel safer - and it's definitely not about making them feel watched."

(CD)