Context

The Campus integrates two schools and a community centre. Herons’ Moor Primary School has pupils from ages 3 to 11, and Baytree School has pupils with special educational needs from ages 3 to 19.

Local Authority

North Somerset

Architects

David Morley Architects

Area

Kitchen/servery:75m ²
Dining: 275m ²

Pupils on roll

The Baytree School: 67
Herons’ Moor Primary School 423

Design

A central kitchen is located in the shared zone between school and community. It has the capacity to provide food to both the community centre internet café and the school dining room. (The provision to the community area is not yet fully up and running.) It is also designed to cater for evening community events – by opening up the movable wall, the atrium can be adapted to become a foyer for events in the main hall. The kitchen is equipped to cook food from fresh ingredients.The dining room is shared between the mainstream primary school and the special school, with one shared servery and subdivision of dining spaces to accommodate different needs, whilst children with packed lunches can eat in the adjacent double height atrium. Dining is an important activity for children with special educational needs and is seen as a lesson in life skills, particularly as they share the space with other pupils and eat at the same time. The room has been designed with high levels of indirect natural daylight, plus natural ventilation and acoustic control, with retrofitted acoustic panels.

School Food Policy

The food policy is currently being rewritten to cover both schools. The school will be appointing a new catering contractor, with an ethos that reflects the school’s ambitions. The new contractor will use locally sourced and organic food only, with an emphasis on fresh produce. It is hoped that these strategies will substantially increase the up-take of school lunches.

The school is also planning to change the arrangements for the mealtime: pupils from the two schools will sit together (at the moment they sit at separate tables) and there will be new and improved furniture.The school is considering buying new cutlery and providing table cloths and flowers.

Feedback

Pupils

• Pupils like the big spacious hall and colourful walls.
• They would like to have more comfortable furniture and to be able to eat outside sometimes.
• Sometimes the dining hall and packed lunch areas are cold in winter.

Head of Catering

• The kitchen has good equipment but the long thin shape is not ideal for preparation and cooking.
• The workspace would be better with windows and views.
• With the increasing emphasis on cooking from fresh, the kitchen will need to be reorganised to have more storage capacity.
• The servery works well (it can handle two separate queues) and could deal with additional capacity (for example, increased demand for community use).

Staff

• There is considerable community demand for using the catering facilities for conferences, Council meetings, training days and promotional events. With the increased capability of the new contractor, it will be easier to meet these demands.

Guidance/Conclusions

What this case study does well:

• The layout of the school works well for encouraging community use, and the catering provision could be an important asset once it is fully functioning
• Pupils like the dining area, and the arrangement for accommodating two schools works well. Further improvements are currently being discussed.