Scotland’s Learning Estate: Building Excellence
Andrew Pring
education design & build magazine (edb) and higher education estates magazine (hee) | Editor
Chair
Andrew Pring is the editor of Stable Media’s market-leading education titles, education design & build and higher education estates.
An experienced B2B editor, Andrew has written about construction issues for many years and is a former editor of the construction title Contract Journal. He has also edited magazines in the leisure and financial sectors, as well as written extensively on business issues. Additionally, he has worked with the New London Architecture group on reports covering tall buildings and infrastructure and has a keen interest in the built environment.
Scott Adams
Turner & Townsend | Associate
Quality First: Transforming Education Through Collaboration
Quality First: Transforming Education Through Collaboration highlights how a relentless focus on quality, supported by insights from the GIRI audit, can reshape outcomes across educational projects. By defining the brief early, teams establish clarity, shared purpose and a strong foundation for success. Effective communication and genuine collaboration ensure that challenges are surfaced early and resolved collectively. Setting clear expectations helps align roles, responsibilities and standards. Ultimately, securing buy‑in to a unified vision creates ownership, drives consistency and empowers all partners to deliver high‑quality, meaningful results. This collaborative approach ensures educational transformation is purposeful, coherent and sustainable.
Claire Mantle
Corstorphine & Wright | Head of Education
Designing Out Barriers: Creating Calm, Inclusive Learning Environments
This presentation argues that the design decisions we make today can have an immediate and lasting impact on inclusion, independence and confidence across the whole school community. Inclusion isn’t a programme. It’s a design decision.
We explore how design influences a child’s wider development and future wellbeing by creating healthy, happy people, not just functional environments.
Case studies demonstrate how calm, clarity and choice can reduce anxiety and remove barriers, creating inclusive environments that work better for students, staff and families alike.
Focusing on practical, low-cost interventions rather than major overhauls, the session highlights strategies for retrofit ideas for existing estates,
such as provision, clear circulation, intuitive wayfinding, sensory-aware materials, and calm spaces including quiet rooms and outdoor learning areas.
Steve Moizer
Learning Through Landscapes | Training & Development Officer
The value and benefit of school grounds in supporting education.
Scotland’s school grounds collectively cover an area the size of Dundee. These are the only spaces where every child should have guaranteed daily access to outdoor learning, play and sport, surrounded by nature and protected from our changing climate, but this is not always the case.
Referring to the outcome of the recent Scottish School Grounds survey, we’ll explore the role school grounds play in supporting education and why involving children and young people in the design, development and use of these outdoor spaces is so important in fostering agency, connection and environmental stewardship.
Nicola Hamill
Pick Everard | Director of Landscape & Architecture