Sparkling new campus for trainee teachers

Adam Hewitt • Published 11 Mar 2010 18:00 0 Comments

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TRAINEE teachers will move back to their original home at a cloistered campus in the heart of Reading - 22 years after they left.

These exclusive images give more insight into Reading University's £30m project to refurbish its 106-year-old London Road campus and move its Institute of Education (IoE) back there from the Bulmershe campus in Woodley.

Preparatory building work is already underway and a public exhibition goes on show this week to show off the plans.

IoE's move back to London Road spells the end of teaching on the Bulmershe campus, which from September next year will be accommodation-only since its health and social care department is to close and the film and theatre department is moving to the Whiteknights campus.

IoE director Professor Andy Goodwyn told The Chronicle: "It's a very exciting opportunity to run a campus closer to Reading with state-of-the-art ways of learning to teach. There's the irony that we're moving from what looks like a more modern campus at Bulmershe to what will be a remodelled 20th century campus ready for the 21st."

The London Road campus is barely used for teaching at the moment, but instead is home to many small organisations linked with the university and some administrative staff. Graduation ceremonies are also held there, in the Great Hall.

The main works are expected to take a year and be done in time for the IoE to open there in September 2011. It trains 1,000 teachers a year, most of whom get jobs in and around Berkshire, and is rated the best place in the country for primary teachers to train.

Many of London Road's buildings will return to something like their original use once the IoE moves back, 22 years after its own move to Bulmershe. The original gym hall will be the IoE's gym for PE teacher training, and the original fine art rooms (pictured in 1904) will become the home for art teachers.

Critics have attacked the university for spending millions on refurbishment and building work while departments are being closed, budgets cut and jobs disappearing.

Acting communications director Alex Brannen said: "Part of this money is from the university's ring-fenced capital projects budget, and part from the sale of the neighbouring Mansfield Hall site to student accommodation providers Unite. It's not taking any money out of the university's operational budget.

"Plus, in a highly competitive educational environment, we need to invest to keep going.

"In difficult times where hard decisions have to be made - we're making £10.6m of cuts before 2012 - it's important to meet the demands of the next generation of students."

History of London Road campus:

The campus began life in 1904 when biscuit magnate Alfred Palmer gifted the land to what was then the university college of Reading under the stewardship of Oxford University. Over the next 20 years, most of the campus' current buildings went up one by one and the fledgling university moved over from its former home in Valpy Street.

The cloistered style mirrored that of Oxford's colleges, but in a red-brick and more recognisably Redingensian style, and made a fine home for the university until the post-war development of the Whiteknights campus took pride of place.

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