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Bog Standard?
publication date: Mar 1, 2007
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author/source: Richard Taylor
In his speech to the Building Schools Exhibition and Conference, Tim Byles, Chief Executive of P4S said, ‘I have been hugely impressed by the work of organisations such as Bog Standard’. So who are Bog Standard (BS) and what do they do? It seems BS’s aims are to:
This sounds pretty basic, but it seems that loos have a disproportionate impact on a school’s educational environment. Why? Because this is where lots of bullying and anti-social behaviour takes place; many are old, smelly and dangerous and lack proper lighting and washing facilities. When you consider that 84% of school toilets are cleaned only once a day or less, 33% have inadequate supplies of loo paper and that 33% of schools actually restrict their use, then the importance of a bottom-up lobbying organisation like BS becomes apparent. Perhaps spending £45bn to develop twenty-first century classrooms that seduce students into learning isn’t the key to improving school standards after all. Fix the loos and, as Kevin Costner said in Field of Dreams, ‘Build it and they will come’. We think BS is one of the best things to come out of BSF so far and Armitage Shanks’s sponsorship of the campaign is a shrewd investment in improving everyone’s bottom line. |