St Roberts R.C. First School, Morpeth

Alterations and refurbishment to reception classroom and toilets

The Brief – A more efficient use of space.

Following the successful refurbishment of the St Robert’s nursery in 2018, the number of children attending the nursery had increased, therefore increasing demand for places in St Robert’s reception class.

Because of this, the school wanted to rethink its reception classroom, allowing the area to take on an expanding role and efficiently use the space available.

The Solution

William Kish Architects came up with an initial concept and also a number of other additional ways to further maximise the area and make it a productive, safe space for pupils.

The concept we developed involved knocking out the internal walls within the class to form a larger open plan area. As you’ll see in the photographs, we also wanted to utilise the existing height of the room to install a new mezzanine storage facility to help declutter the classroom and provide much-needed storage space. 

From there, we also designed bespoke shelving and storage units developed with both the teachers and children in mind.

Something we also brought into consideration was the way sound travelled throughout the room. With a larger class, it’s crucial that all pupils can pay attention and easily listen to instructions, which is why we also planned a number of acoustic improvements around the classroom, allowing for sound diffusion and better speech intelligibility.

It was also important that we created designated activity areas throughout the space to further enhance the children’s learning and engagement. With this in mind, we incorporated into our concept a new ‘wet’ play facility island unit and an extended seat and window bench staging to provide a story corner and performance area for the children.

In addition to the above, we designed toilet facilities, new toilets, cubicles and a vanity unit. Within the facilities, we also added infra-red activated taps with blending valves to prevent scalding and any potential accidents.

Both the toilet facilities and classroom were decorated with hard-wearing vinyl flooring for ease of cleaning/ improved hygiene and we also added new LED lighting throughout the full space.

The Results

Once the initial concept was approved by St Roberts, we managed the full project to completion, ensuring that all specifications and criteria were met by our building partners and that the final design exceeded the school’s expectations

The project lasted approximately seven months and we were delighted to receive the following feedback from Head Teacher…