I’m sitting writing this in a central Edinburgh Starbucks on a Saturday morning, ahead of a strategy day with a charity partner. Love them or loathe them, Starbucks get right what many schools get wrong.

When Starbucks found their secret sauce, they realised they weren’t just selling coffee. They were creating an experience that is guaranteed whether you’re in Edinburgh or Edmonton, Mumbai or Melbourne.

It’s easy to overlook, particularly if you’re in Melbourne wondering why on earth you’d go to a Starbucks in that city.

But it’s why millions of people choose to sit in a Starbucks with their laptop or sketchbook, even when the coffee might not be their first pick.

Now imagine applying that same thinking to the most expensive investment your school will ever make: its spaces. The design decision that can derail 20 years of transformation. Or empower it.

You’ve seen it before. The shiny new school with a glossy mission and a promise to be “innovative”. A big atrium here. A colourful nook there.

And behind it all? The same old rabbit-hutch classrooms, lined up like a filing system, or the spreadsheet the Board used to work out how they’d pay for it.

This isn’t a one-off mistake. It’s the result of a flawed strategy that starts the moment a community picks its architect. Because when you choose a designer based on a glossy pitch or a nice project in another city, you risk copying someone else’s solution for a completely different problem.

There are three ways to stop your school strategy falling at the first hurdle.

After 15 years working with leadership teams from Perth to Paris, we’ve learned that designing a great space isn’t about the space at all.

It’s about bridging the gap between your ambition and your architect’s assumptions.

Here are the three tools we use to make that leap:

🛠 Prototyping, not posturing. Spaces are like teaching strategies—you don’t know if they work until you test them. At Iona Presentation College in Perth, Australia, we helped staff imagine different ways of working for a year or two before a single brick was laid. The prototypes of practice were messy: collaborative lessons squeezed into spaces designed for teacher talk.

Today, messy prototypes of dream practice in nightmare old classrooms have taught us lessons that translated into design drivers. Those design drivers led to a thriving centre of interdisciplinary learning.

No lonely ottomans hinting at collaboration that doesn’t happen. No filler furniture. Just space that works.

🗣 Use meaningful language. Say what you mean.
“Innovative learning environments” can mean anything—or nothing at all. When we hear phrases like “21st century learning” or “student-centred design”, we ask: what do you mean by that? And how would your teachers or parents describe it without the buzzwords? Remember: buzzwords, jargon and edu-babble only serve to exclude people from your community. If you’re really about inclusion, start by using language anyone can understand. (This is what our Dear Architect masterplan booklets achieve):

🎯 Provocation over consultation. “Consultation” is often code for collecting opinions no-one intends to use. We provoke instead. We invite community members to challenge the brief, share their most dramatic ideas on what learning could feel like and result in, and we test every assumption. We don’t just listen—we act on what we hear. It’s hard for architecture firms to do this on their own. Frankly, they lack the edu nous or credibility to provoke change in learning and teaching. Likewise, most educators don’t know what they don’t know when it comes to design. Provocation from a team that know both worlds helps bridge the gap.

Design isn’t decoration. It’s decision-making. What would it take to design the kind of spaces where your students—and your team—can thrive for the next 20 years?

Because the first step isn’t bricks or budget.

It’s a better question.