Covid-19 Primary School Net Capacity Assessment
In these very strange times where the Covid-19 lock down is being relaxed and the government are keen to see Nursery, Reception, Year 1 and Year 6 pupils going back to school; we have been approached by a number of LA's, Diocese and Multi-Academy Trusts to support with working out how they manage what is going to be a considerable challenge over the coming weeks and months.
With the DfE's building bulletin 103 space standards becoming temporarily redundant whilst we are batting with this virus, we needed a way to look at the internal space within primary schools along with the number of teaching and support staff to define how many pupils could be catered for in the priority year groups.
We have developed a tool for this where we extract and cleanse the room data from the Net Capacity Assessment that have been completed for each school by their relevant Local Authority. Using the latest census data for both pupil and staff numbers, we are then able to import this data and run calculations based on the following:
- Minimum Area Per Pupil
- Minimum Class Sizes
- Average Number of Teachers/Teaching Assistants/Lunchtime Staff Available
- Percentage of Pupils Coming Back to School by Year Group
- Average Class Sizes Based on the Rooms Available
- Teacher/Pupil Ratios
We then check the floor plans for the school to ensure that the spaces identified correlate before providing an excel spreadsheet that can be manipulated and amended to reflect the pressures at a school level. The floor plans are inserted into the tool to allow the schools senior leadership teams to annotate teaching spaces, access/egress points, circulation routes and class locations to demonstrate their plan to the pupils, staff and parents.
We are really pleased with the resulting tool and the positive impact that it will have by supporting schools to plan their pupil populations over the coming months as life hopefully begins to get back to normal.
The next challenge for 1st Planner is going to be creating similar tools for secondary, special, pupil referral units and alternative provision settings, which will all have subtly different rules.
Please feel free to get in touch if this may support your schools over the coming weeks, months and potentially even years.