Walking into the junior school building at St Philip’s Christian College Cessnock, you could easily think you have been teleported from the Hunter Valley to Silicon Valley.
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The bright, modern design and of course, the slide, wouldn’t look out of place at Google’s headquarters.
School principal Darren Cox said the new building represents future thinking.
“It’s about creating engaging learning spaces,” he said.
“Schools should be fun and enjoyable.”
Mr Cox said that the new facilities have been well-embraced by staff and school families.
“By far the most common remark I receive when parents walk into the space is ‘I wish school was like this when I was a kid’,” he said.
“We have created an environment which exudes life and creativity.
“The colours are engaging and uplifting both inside and out, we have incorporated a great deal of glass to allow the students to feel connected to the fabulous surrounds of our location.”
The junior school is home to 330 students from kindergarten to year 4, plus 60 prep students who attend two-to-three days a week.
“It’s a place they love to come each day, take pride in their school and enjoy the experience,” head of the junior school, Margaret Pond said.
And the teachers love it too: “It’s inspiring and motivating to come to work when you have such quality facilities,” Mrs Pond said.
The junior school moves away from the traditional classroom layout to an open classroom design.
Along with the centrepiece slide (which students can use as a reward for good behaviour, and their birthday), there are reading nooks, aquariums and a drama pit.
St Philip’s executive principal Graeme Irwin said he is pleased to see the fruition of what is a culmination of years of research into effective learning spaces.
“What we discovered is that the rigid classroom setting with the teacher offering information does not cater for the many different learning styles that we see in young people today,” Mr Irwin said.
“We are instead moving away from closed classrooms and desks in rows to an environment where the children learn through discovery and teachers collaborate to teach to their strengths rather than having to cover such a broad range of subject areas.
“The new junior school at Cessnock encompasses this pedagogy beautifully and it is wonderful to see it in action.”
The building was designed by Ian Easton and constructed by North Constructions.
The ground-breaking design has been put forward for an award with the Association of Learning Environments, which awards ingenuity in educational design across Australasia.
