The £4.4m scheme will provide the first facility of its kind on campus, while fulfilling part of the university’s pledge to achieve zero emissions by 2030.
The project supports a wider target announced by the government to see the UK halve its emissions in the next decade and become net zero by 2050.
With a completion date of early 2022, the new setting in Stoke-on-Trent is being built by contractor Henry Brothers, whose team includes structural engineers, transport consultants and landscape designers.
Situated in Leek Road close to the university’s nature reserve, the nursery and forest school also benefits from being close to the city centre and good public transport links.
The contractor says the building’s design uses highly efficient technologies for heating, cooling and ventilation which will make it low polluting and environmentally sound.
Significant zero carbon features included in the building’s design are larch timber cladding, solar panels and an air source heat pump.
The solar roof panels will help to offset carbon emissions and the power generated from them will be displayed in the building, the university says. The environmentally friendly heat pump will provide the main form of heating for the building, it adds.
Since the building will be used as a nursery, it is subject to strict requirements in terms of temperature control, with rooms needing different temperatures.
It is being fitted with underground tubes that use natural ventilation from the surrounding soil where the temperature is a constant 8-12 degrees. This means the soil temperature is capable of pre-cooling the air in the summer and pre-heating it in the winter, resulting in less mechanical ventilation being required. Three air source heat pumps will help draw air through the tubes into the building.
Another sustainable feature employs timber frames that provide more space for insulation than brick buildings and is itself a low energy material to manufacture from raw material to finished product.
The building’s Velfac windows, made from aluminium and natural wood, will be double glazed to reduce external noise and improve thermal value.
An internal air seal has also been fitted around the building to improve air tightness and reduce moisture flow into and through the walls, floor and roof.
During construction, the university says it chose to use EcoCabins and naturally flushing toilets to ensure no opportunity was missed to improve its carbon footprint.
The completion of the project will see the capacity of the existing nursery on campus doubled to 100 full day-care places for children aged up to five years old.
The site will be open 51 weeks a year, providing school holiday provision for children aged between five and 11, as well as educational sessions to support schools in the region.
When it reaches full capacity, there will be 36 staff at the site, with members of the existing team undertaking Forest School training to work across both types of provision.
Inside, the nursery will feature four “inspirational learning spaces” that include areas for food preparation and wet play, as well as offering “flexible floor space,” the university says.
Floorplans also incorporate additional capacity for a 24-place classroom and observational suite fitted with the latest digital technology, it adds.
This suite will be used to observe teaching, facilitating applied learning for trainee teachers, social workers, special educational needs co-ordinators and students.
Meanwhile, the Forest School provision has been designed for children between the ages of three and seven, and aims to develop links with local schools.
It will offer the chance to experience outdoor learning through activities such as identifying nature, play-based learning, den building and forest art.
The university says this type of provision will enable the children to develop a wide range of skills and knowledge outside the traditional classroom environment.
“Strong connections to the environment promote wellbeing and the facility provides a vast amount of outdoor green space with safe and secure access directly from the indoor space, allowing children to transit freely from inside to outside,” it says in a statement.
“The building is in close proximity to the nature reserve, which provides a flourish of natural materials embracing and enhancing the surroundings.”
It is hoped children will benefit from this “blended” indoor and outdoor learning, which will provide them with a range of physical experiences.
“It will allow them to use their imaginations, make decisions and errors themselves, facilitating them to become independent thinkers and learn about their world by directly experiencing it,” explains the university.
“The facility will meet the student and staff demand for nursery places and also provide the capacity to provide more nursery places for those working and or living locally, as well as building on the university’s family-friendly campus ethos.”
GOOD IDEA
FIRM DONATES TREES TO OFFSET ITS CARBON FOOTPRINT
Nursery management software firm Connect Childcare will plant a tree in Madagascar for every Connect Childcare software demo booked and is aiming to have a “Connect Forest” by July 2022.
Connect Childcare has already donated 57 trees, offsetting its carbon footprint for a full year by removing more than 17 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Once Connect reaches the 250-tree milestone, the company will have offset the emission for its headquarters in Lancashire for the next five years. The company also aims to start offsetting the carbon footprint of its employees too.
Cheryl Hadland, founder of the Green Early Years Choices Champion and managing director of the Hadland Care Group – comprising Tops Day Nurseries – adds: “Investing in the education of our children is the most effective way to provide a sustainable environment well into the future.”
A survey of parents conducted by the Hadland Care Group found that 86 per cent said it was important to them that their nursery is eco-friendly.
Hadland adds: “It’s vital that we leave our world fit for the next generations to enjoy a healthy life, and sustainability should be embedded into every element of the early years environment where possible – from segregating waste and upcycling resources to growing produce in the gardens – to help make this happen.”
EXPERT VIEW
MAKING SUSTAINABILITY PART OF EVERYDAY PRACTICE NEED NOT BE DAUNTING
By Hilary White, former nursery and primary teacher
While we do not know what the world will look like when the current generation of pre-school children become adults, we can be sure that sustainability will be of key importance.
Environmental awareness, social responsibility and sustainable living need to be integrated into every aspect of our lives. This in turn means that sustainability education should be a part of everything we do in the early years setting.
Sustainability education encompasses much more than just a set of activities and learning objectives. Sustainability is a mindset, a way of life, a lens through which every action is viewed with regard to how it might impact the environment. Children growing up with sustainability awareness and a sense of social responsibility will automatically know to refuse, reduce, re-use or recycle, in that order. It will be second nature for them to consider what will happen to their waste, how their travel plans might affect the environment, or their purchases impact worker welfare. If we are to limit the environmental damage we have caused, it is crucial for future generations to hold very different values and attitudes from those that have prevailed so far.
For early years practitioners, it’s useful to remember that most aspects of good practice play a central part in sustainability education. Thinking critically, creativity and self-regulation are just three of the cognitive skills and behaviours that are fundamental both to children’s learning and development, and to sustainability. Sustainable living requires us to make considered choices (thinking critically), while finding solutions to environmental problems demands creative out-of-the-box thinking. In order to live sustainably, we need to put environmental considerations ahead of our own immediate desires (for example, choosing one eco-friendly clothing item over cheap fast fashion), and this draws on the self-regulatory behaviours of mental focus, impulse control and delayed gratification. All this might seem a world away from the three-year-old exploring the best way to plant seeds, build sandcastles or share popular toys with several other children. However, these everyday experiences are invaluable in building the essential cognitive and behavioural foundations for sustainable living.
Sustainability education is not just about creating a socially responsible society for the future. The child’s here-and-now contribution to sustainable living is just as valid, and it is incumbent upon all adults to involve children in planning, carrying out and assessing strategies for sustainability.
Many everyday activities can be adapted to meet this requirement, and we need to remember that sustainability comes into just about every aspect of life. From sorting for recycling and composting vegetable scraps to litter picking and charity shop visits, there are numerous activities that fall under the sustainability umbrella.
Introducing sustainability education into early years provision is of vital importance to both the child’s current learning and future life. It need not, however, be a daunting prospect if we remember that good practice already encompasses the foundational skills required for sustainable and socially responsible living.
-
Hilary White is author of Educating Social Responsibility, published by the Early Years Alliance, available from www.eyalliance.org.uk/
Read more in CYP Now's special report on sustainable services
