http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-19787570

Can we have Utility Furniture back next?

My school was what I can only describe as a 1960s quick fix greenhouse. Thankfully now it has been demolished, but by the time I got to it in 1979 was at the end of its life expectancy, and the fabric of the place was always in need of repair. Thanks to the Thatcherite Junta, it never got much more than a cosmetic retouch. Being involved in things like woodwork, I helped make new outside benches to replace those that had just rotted outside because there was literally no money in the budget to get new ones in.

Prefabs are a short term solution that will cost more in the long run. It would be better to build schools that will last many decades and can be remodelled whenever necessary so that excludes the use of PFI. It might be more initially but cheaper long term.

Don't tell Huf Haus that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huf_Haus

Well the US also has excellent manufactured/prefabs though some how I do not see our glorious leaders doing this well. I am not anti prefab.


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It's a great idea, that we'll bungle in the execution. As usual. Ambitious but rubbish.

Modern "pre-fab" can be durable and vey economical (including to run/ heat etc)
Things have moved on since the post war pre-fabs you know

They are widly used in house building in the US and Germany

I guess there's good pre-fab and poor pre-fab, just like anything else. I saw on one of those 'build your own home' shows a guy shipped a pre-fab bungalow over from Germany on the back of a lorry and the guys who came with it put it up in about two days. And it didn't at all look like a shed, it looked like a proper luxury home. I assume the school buildings won't be quite that luxurious but there's no reason to believe they will be fragile. However the article does make the good point that they need to be properly designed to function as schools, not just be generic blocks that happen to have large empty rooms in.