Report from Granlund presented to the World Building Congress on school networks

The research drew material from 19 reports on school networks prepared by Granlund between 2011 and 2013.

Granlund is actively involved in the CIB World Building Congress (WBC 2016), which will be held in Tampere from 30 May to 3 June. Heikki Lonka and Topi Korpela will hold an event on Thursday 2 June to present a research article evaluating the Finnish school network.

”By international comparison, Finnish schools are too small and arbitrarily located. Granlund has been involved in preparing school network plans for around 20 municipalities. These plans have focused on the quality and overall operating costs of the school network;” Heikki Lonka says of the bases for the research article.

In their article, Lonka and Korpela discuss how an ideal school network should be constructed and the cost savings that could be realised if school networks focused on optimising the system as a whole.

The research drew material from 19 reports on school networks prepared by Granlund between 2011 and 2013. Lonka and Korpela used a simulation model based on the reports enabling them to estimate that 75–80 per cent of the costs of the school network are attributable to operations, while buildings and premises account for only 20–25 per cent.

”A more functional, higher-quality school network can be obtained by building larger schools that better support the new curriculum and are located around good transport links. By approaching the network as a single entity, society could save EUR 730 million while improving the quality of teaching,” Korpela says of the report’s results.

According to Lonka and Korpela, the school network should be studied and planned from the perspective of the network as a whole right from the start. Nowadays, the focus is often on individual school buildings, and attempts are often made to plant the operational school network into existing buildings.

”In the grand scheme of things, premises and buildings are merely supporting functions. We want to steer discussion on the school network towards a mindset that takes in the big picture. Public discourse around schools typically focuses on individual buildings and little attention is paid to a perspective that takes in the school network as a whole,” Lonka says.

Heikki Lonka and Topi Korpela will present their article from 11am on Thursday 2 June in the Sonaatti 2 room at Tampere Hall as part of the Urban Resilience Benchmarking and Metrics Session at the WBC2016 conference.

Further information and contact details:

Heikki Lonka
Leading Expert, Granlund Oy
tel. +358 50 350 4297
firstname.lastname@granlund.fi

Topi Korpela
Real Estate Consultant, Granlund Oy
tel. +358 40 845 1707
firstname.lastname@granlund.fi