Building Bulletins
Building Bulletins are produced by the DfE and offer guidance on a range of subjects, from whole school design schedules to detailed engineering specifics.
Building Bulletin 98
BB98: Briefing framework for secondary school projects sets out simple, realistic, non–statutory area guidelines for secondary school buildings and grounds. It also includes simple guidance on how schools and LAs should develop the brief for any secondary school and the design criteria that are crucial for the client body to consider.
Revisiting BB98: The design team at PfS have published a Schedule of Accommodation proforma, which works with the key recommendations of BB98 but is based on families of spaces with a critical mass to allow for various educational models to evolve and develop.
Download Schedule of Accommodation
The draft Facilities and Services Output Specification (FSOS) was published in November 2008 - see BSF Standard Documents: Output Specification. In November 2008, Beech Williamson, Design Manager at PfS, put together a presentation on FSOS, which can be downloaded from here.
Download presentation on the draft Facilities and Services Output Specification
Building Bulletin 102
BB102: Designing for disabled children and children with special educational needs was published in 2008. It replaces the draft BB77: Designing for Pupils with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities, as well as BB91 and BB94, and sets outs useful design guidance for spaces in both special schools and specially-resourced facilities in mainstream schools, with case studies.
The example schedules of accommodation have been reformatted to be more consistent, and now generally match the categories of net and non-net area used in BB98 and 99. However, the overall recommended gross area in all the special school schedules published remain the same: within around 3% of the area that would be calculated by the PfS funding formulae. The current funding allowances will therefore continue to be appropriate.