Staff and pupils at Wester Hailes High School returned from the October half term break into their brand new school building which has replaced four separate teaching blocks with a single, modern education facility.
McLaughlin & Harvey was appointed by the Council to deliver the 800 capacity new building, which has been designed by Architype.
The new school building is designed around a central, bright and open atrium, bringing pupils together while connecting departments and classrooms.
Each floor features a series of breakout and retreat spaces to offer pupils choice on where they want to work, socialise or take time out. Internal spaces have been decorated with warm colours and light woods to create comfortable spaces for learning and coming together.
You can take part in the new Granton Waterfront Primary School public consultation online. Responses to the consultation will be considered as part of the Planning Application for the project.
The consultation will start Wednesday, 26 August 2026 and close on Thursday 15 October 2026 at 5.00pm.
Exhibition and Public Engagement events to discuss the proposals will be held at
Muirhouse Library, 2A Macmillan Cres, Edinburgh EH4 4AB on Wednesday, 26 August 2026 1.15pm – 5.00pm
Granton Station, 1 Granton Station Square, Granton, Waterfront Broadway, Edinburgh EH5 1FU on Thursday, 8 October 2026 5.15pm – 8.30pm
In September 2021, our Learning Estate Strategy was published. Using the Scottish Government Learning Estate Strategy and its Guiding Principles as a guide, our strategy sets out our vision for the Learning Estate based around five core themes of Teaching and Learning, Community, Inclusion, Sustainability and Digital.
To work alongside the Learning Estate Strategy, we are also developing Strategic Design Briefs for Early Years settings and Primary and Secondary Schools. For our Secondary School Strategic Brief, we have identified high level principles that set out our vision for shared, flexible, diverse and inclusive learning spaces for our young people.
The latest news on the plans to redevelop Trinity Academy can be found in the recently published newsletter. With the Phase 1 rebuild of sports facilities at Bangholm completing soon, ready for August 2022, this is an exciting time for the Trinity community.
At the Education Buildings Scotland Conference 2019 we exhibited the five finalists’ entries for the Future Schools Project Award competition, which aims to promote learners as designers of their own learning environments. This competition was open to all City of Edinburgh Council nurseries and schools. Learners were asked to design a space in their school or nursery that would improve teaching and learning, inclusivity and wellbeing.
The finalists were Broughton High and Corstorphine, St Cuthbert’s, St John Vianney and Murrayburn Primaries. We thought it would be a great idea to have the finalists showcase their submissions at the annual Education Buildings Scotland Conference and have the winner announced on stage. The entries were judged by a panel of seven judges with experience of school projects for the future of learning and the public at the conference were also voting for their favourite which counted toward their final score.
We’re glad to say that we’re now working with our development partner, Hub South East to make the winners’ dream a reality. The City of Edinburgh Council has worked with Hub South East over the last 9 years to create fantastic new learning spaces across Edinburgh and now the winners will have this experienced team and its supply chain help bring their ideas to life as the winning design is taken though a Junior Hub process to develop the ideas from concept through to delivery in their school.
Learner voice is so important
We were delighted when the conference organisers and board members gave us use of an amazing space in the conference hall to display the finalist’s submissions. It was a great space with lots of room, which was needed because there were so many visitors to the stall. The learners from the finalist schools presented their research and designs to the conference attendees who were really enthusiastic to see them.
The professionals that work in building schools were keen to hear what the learners had to say. There was a real buzz around the stall, throughout the conference and internationally on Twitter about the competition.
Broughton High SchoolCorstorphine PrimaryMurrayburn PrimarySt Cuthbert’s PrimarySt John Vianney’s Primary
They all did such an amazing job and spoke well about their research and thoughts behind their designs and were very proactive in pitching their ideas to gain some extra points through the public’s vote.
Deputy First Minister, John Swinney visited the stall and listened to each school present their work to him. The finalists talked through their designs, why they had made the decisions they had and showed off their video pitches. The Deputy First Minister asked them a lot of questions and they answered really well using the knowledge they had acquired from all of their great research. Once John Swinney had listened to everyone present, he announced the winner on stage alongside HUB South East’s Richard Park.
All of the finalists did amazing research and design work and we’ll showcase it here on our competition page, until the here is a run down of the outcome of the competition:
We are a group from Primary 5 at St John Vianney Primary School. Our school is in the Inch on the south side of Edinburgh. Last year when we were in Primary 4 our class decided to enter the Future Schools competition. We have a room called the AV room. Apparently, that stands for ‘audio visual’ room. Once upon a time the room was used for pupils to watch things on the tv, now everybody uses it for everything and uses it in different ways! But the room is old, empty, dull, bland and boring and doesn’t inspire us to learn. We want to create a space that works for everyone. A space that can change and adapt to meet the needs of everyone that uses it. Based on all our research and learning we have now created a design for a room with furniture and storage that can be used in different ways for all the different activities. A room that can be used by individuals, groups or whole classes. We want everyone who uses the room to walk into it and say WOW, this is a fantastic learning and doing space and I want to be here!
“Hi, I’m Sampoorna from Murrayburn Primary School and I will tell you about our idea – The STEAM Room. So, our problem identified in stage 1 was that we didn’t have a space where we could learn actively. A place where nobody would mind about getting all messy. But our school doesn’t have enough money or resources to do this. So we thought of The STEAM Room – Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Maths. The STEAM Room is a place where all types of learning is possible. It is a room for experiments, messy art, dirty science and lots more. Children will be able to learn how to use skills like apply, analyse and evaluate, some of the key things in active learning.”- Sampoorna, age 10
Sampoorna and her Primary 7 classmates have developed their idea from scratch. They have surveyed the whole school and identified active learning, together with STEAM as areas which the children and staff would like to improve.
We are Corstorphine Primary School and we are dreaming of a classroom where the ceiling is the sky. Our design features an innovative wildlife garden classroom for all children in our school community. Working within the heart of our village, our school thrives when we work together and our entry has been designed in consultation with our children, staff, families and community. Our aim is to connect our children back to nature as a stimulus for discovery, to develop sustainability and take the ceiling off our learning. The sky is the limit!
The St Cuthbert’s Primary School’s team have been working with a lot of enthusiasm for the Future Schools Edinburgh Project Award. We are dreaming of turning our current library from an inefficient multi-purpose room to the heart of our school! The current issues with our library are related to Access, Environment, Inclusivity and differentiation, Resources and space management, Partnership, Teaching and learning. We dream that our library can be transformed to an exciting and inclusive environment in which a plethora of meaningful learning experiences can take place! At St Cuthbert’s we dream of our future school and we work hard together to achieve our goals! We did our very best to turn all our ideas into an effective and flexible design. Helping us bring this design to life will massively improve the learning experiences of all pupils in our school while promoting our design to inspire more schools around Edinburgh and around the world!
We are a team of S3 pupils from Broughton High School, working on behalf of the pupils, the staff and our local community. We have created a sustainable, multi-functional space, bringing the outdoors indoors. Whilst an integral part of our school, emotionally this is a very different space. Our design brings together several initiatives and projects running within our school and offers an entirely different vibe to benefit the pupils, the staff and our local community.
We have strived to build upon the nurture facilities currently provided within our school. We think all pupils should enjoy coming to school and feel a strong sense of belonging. We believe all parents/carers should feel able to engage with our learning environment. We would love to see the school’s enterprising initiative expand to further develop the employability skills of many pupils. We are an important part of our local community, we rely on our local community and we are endeavouring to improve our partnership working through our design.
I visited St John’s RC Primary in March to hear how they were finding their new school building, the first primary in Edinburgh to be designed with agile spaces to support active learning.
Headteacher Jackie Kelly talked to me about the great new learning spaces and I was keen to find out from the learners what they thought too.
Since then, the school has inspired the staff and learners of Victoria Primary who have been taking part in engagement sessions to design their new school.
Check out the updated write up of St John’s Primary to find out more.
Stage 2 of the Future Schools Project Award kicked off with a workshop on Monday 26 August. Our five finalists, Broughton High, St Cuthbert’s Primary, Corstorphine Primary, Murrayburn Primary and St John Vianney’s Primary chose five learners to attend with a teacher. These groups are going to lead the project throughout stage 2 and had been selected for their hard work already on stage 1 of the competition.
The learners arrived with eager anticipation, ready to find out what they had to do for the next stage of the competition.
We spoke to the finalists about what we were looking for from them in stage 2. For the first part of the competition they told us:
How changing the design of a space in their school or nursery would improve teaching and learning, inclusivity and wellbeing for user(s) they had identified.
At the workshop we had a 15 minute info-dash where the schools had 15 minutes each with a professional to get advice about their ideas and how they can make their solution fit the brief for stage 2.
Some of the finalists already had a design solution in mind at stage 1 but after speaking with the experts and understanding the brief for stage 2, they began to re-imagine what they had planned; prioritising certain elements and being creative with their design solutions.
Thank you to our six experts who gave up their time to come and talk through the designs with the finalists. We invited professionals from specific backgrounds to give the schools insight into the areas we are asking them to focus on for their entry.
Settings for Learning: Lesley Riddell Robertson and David Fletcher from Architecture & Design Scotland. Lesley and David gave advice on how to evaluate the spaces they have, test ideas and plan spaces for new approaches to learning and teaching.
Pedagogy, Learning and Teaching: Janice Watson from CEC Quality Improvement Team. Janice spoke about different ways teachers can teach and learners can learn. Janice gave advice on how they might consider how people will use the environment and how it can improve learning and teaching.
Interior Design: Lesley McMillan from CEC Interior Design Team. Lesley gave advice on considering how furniture and decoration can help to meet the needs of their project to help to solve the problem they identified. Also how you can use interior design to improve wellbeing and inclusivity.
Technology: Jenni Robertson from CEC Quality Improvement Team. Jenni gave advice on how they might consider the use of technology in their design, Jenni advised on the practicalities of their ideas and an understanding of what is possible in our schools.
Outdoor spaces: Andrew Bagnall from CEC Outdoor Learning Team. Andrew gave advice on how they can improve learning and teaching in the outdoors. He spoke about practical solutions for creating outdoor spaces that are inclusive and promote wellbeing
Communication & Presentation: Neil Maguire, After the News. Neil gave advice on how to present their submission, focusing on the story they want to tell, clear communication strategies, and considerations when producing their 2-minute film.
The learners brought their submissions from stage 1 to discuss with the experts and were wonderfully engaged and focused on the project and feedback they were getting.
It was a lot of information to take in over two hours and everyone did really well keeping focused and enthusiastic. It was then time for the schools to take a breather, absorb the information, gather their thoughts and discuss what they had learned in their groups. It was also a good opportunity to ask the professionals to join them in their discussions.
Next steps
Now the schools plan to take what they learned in the workshop back to their peers and develop their plans further.
We wish them all the best, the submission deadline is 8th November and the learners will be displaying their submissions at the the Education Buildings Scotland Conferenceon the 27th November where the winner will be decided.
Keep up to date with the competition by following us on Twitter @futureschoolsed and #futureschoolsprojectaward
The Scottish Futures Trust visited Trinity Primary School’s Primary 7 to see their learning environment and talk to the learners and staff to find out about the successes, challenges and any words of advice they could offer other schools.
Making their solution into a design that works
