Planning Learning Spaces was published in October 2019 as a guide for anyone involved in the planning and design of learning environments. The book brought together educationalists and innovative school architects from all over the world to pool their collective expertise and inspire the design of more intelligent learning spaces.

To support this, Planning Learning Spaces in Practice (PLSiP) was launched to help schools translate their educational vision into learning space design principles, enabling them to create new, or refurbish existing, spaces that actively support their learning goals. Schools are guided through a reflective process, building the link between curriculum and design via a structured framework. Focusing on the school’s vision, values and ethos, the process helps translate learning behaviours and activities into design principles.

Trumpington Park Primary School in Cambridge was invited to participate in the global pilot of this PLSiP project. Offering a new approach to learning space design, the Planning Learning Spaces team is working with the school to help colleagues align their physical learning environments with their educational vision, in a way that supports the children’s personalised and independent learning.

Terry White, Project Director and co[1]author of Planning Learning Spaces, said: “We know the impact learning environments have on educational outcomes, yet the majority of school classrooms are over 40 years old and even new builds fail to learn the lessons of research like The Clever Classroom report. So we have developed a structured framework that enables the school to reimagine their future environments for learning.”

The Planning Learning Spaces in Practice process is suitable for schools looking to repurpose old spaces, or for those designing new buildings, and helps to ensure a successful transition into these purpose-designed learning spaces