Partnerships for Schools – the body responsible for delivering £8bn of capital investment to help transform schools throughout England into world-class teaching and learning environments – has announced it is to host its first Academy-focused open day, at Sunderland’s award-winning new Academy 360, next month.

The new all-through Academy 360 opened in September 2009 with a specialism in Business, Innovation and Performing Arts, replacing the existing Quarry View Primary and Pennywell Secondary Schools in Sunderland.

Thanks to its well-tailored vision, strong design and excellent stakeholder engagement programme, Academy 360 won the prize for Best BSF Academy at the 2009 PfS Excellence in BSF Awards in November.

The open day will offer an opportunity to take a tour of an award-winning all-through academy and hear first-hand from those involved at project level on how they created such an inspirational and innovative place of learning for pupils and the wider community.

Desco delivered the M&E services design for the award-winning academy with a particular focus on energy efficiency and sustainability issues. Our designs make maximum use of natural ventilation and daylighting to the teaching and learning spaces, including carbon-neutral biomass-fuelled boilers and solar thermal hot water pre-heating to minimise energy requirements.

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