JERSEY COLLEGE FOR GIRLS and VICTORIAN COLLEGE;School buildings often have a long life and spaces may have to serve many functions.

2C.4 ADAPTABILITY

• Expansion and adaptation should always be allowed for.
• The location of services and structure should not restrict adaptation.

Schools buildings are not static; they adapt over time to meet changing needs. Adaptability should therefore be considered at the design stage.
A number of unpredictable changes can lead to the need for adaption or expansion:
• Range of users (e.g. more SEN pupils);
• Numbers of users (e.g. due to population fluctuations);
• Type or balance of activities (e.g. due to curriculum developments, or an increased range of family and community provision);
• Organisational structure (e.g. different group sizes).

A good model of adaptability is a speculative office building, which is basically a shell with services that are expensive to move (lift, stairs, toilets etc) concentrated in a core. This format is not, however, wholly applicable to schools where the frequency of adaptation doesn't justify the expense of office-standard relocatable partitions. The partitions of an office building may be moved as often as every two years but the partitions in a school are more likely to be moved every 5-10 years.
The need to consider expansion when preparing the site plan is examined in section 2C.1. The building form should also be considered ­ some buildings, for example simple linear plans, are easier to adapt than others. 'Statement' buildings and more idiosyncratic buildings can be difficult to extend.