St George's Announces New Development Project

Today we announce an exciting new development for St George’s School as part of our strategy to continue pioneering the best possible education, school experience and facilities designed specifically with the needs of girls in mind.

We are bringing all our facilities together on the main Ravelston campus, creating a new highly sustainable building on one cohesive site. This means that the Lansdowne site (which currently houses our Lower School pupils) will be sold and we will create an innovative additional building on the main campus.

The new development will enhance teaching, learning across a range of subjects and provide a pastoral and wellbeing hub for the key transition stage of 10- to 13-year-olds (Lower School). The building will have:

• Versatile new teaching spaces that support problem-solving and project-based learning in areas such as STEM, computing, enterprise and creative subjects.

• Welfare spaces, including quiet zone areas, a common room and tech-enabled meeting spaces.

• A purpose-built outdoor space – which is vital as this is the age where girls tend to stop playing actively.

• The building will also be available for community use, with particular emphasis on providing access to girls in Edinburgh to the specialist facilities.

Carol Chandler-Thompson, Head of St George's School, said:

“It is of great importance to us to honour our school’s past and to balance maintaining a beautiful, historic campus, with ensuring St George’s offers the best 21st century educational environment. We have a carefully considered, proactive future strategy to ensure we constantly improve all aspects of our school and school experience.

“The history of Lansdowne House as a stand-alone school, and indeed as part of St George’s, is a highly valued part of local and school history. We are fully committed to keeping the fabric and legacy of Lansdowne House part of our identity as we move forward. However, currently being split across two sites causes logistical challenges and increased costs of maintenance. The Lansdowne building is beautiful, but facilities like this are very difficult to renovate and suitably equip with sustainable and modern technology. As the house ages, its ongoing maintenance becomes ever more impractical and expensive.

“The new building’s design will reflect the importance St George’s has long-placed upon developing the pupils’ skills for the future: problem-solving, team-working, generating creative solutions, testing hypotheses, and using their voice to communicate ideas to peers and wider audiences.”

Once construction work has commenced on the main campus, there will be careful and safe separation of school life and construction work. Every effort will be made to keep disruption to a minimum to pupils, staff and neighbours as the building project will be phased to follow the rhythm of school year as far as possible.

You can read more about the plans for the building on the Ravelston campus including the timescales, the sale of Lansdowne, and the exciting opportunities this project will bring to our pupils by clicking on the 'Estate Development Project' brochure and the PDF download button.