Historic school buildings represent a significant part of England’s heritage. There are around 5,000 entries on the listed building system relating to schools – although not all remain in educational use – while there are many more situated within conservation areas. As well as their architectural and historic interest, these buildings are important community buildings in villages, towns and cities across the country and often constitute a focal point for their local community.

With the ending of various funding streams in summer 2010, including the Building Schools for the Future programme, there has been a significant reduction in the available capital funding for investment in school buildings. This is likely to mean that refurbishment projects become the norm in all but a handful of cases when local authorities are considering how to update their school estate and ensure it enables high quality learning suitable for the 21st century.

Refurbishing Historic School Buildings demonstrates how historic school buildings can be successfully modernised to provide inspirational and well-equipped learning environments. Drawing out key lessons from projects over recent years and identifying a series of successful case studies, the document shows the inherent flexibility of many historic school buildings and how modern technology and teaching methods can be accommodated within them, together with strategies for achieving environmental standards.