Education estates have traditionally been measured by their ability to deliver quality teaching and learning. Today, we must expect more from our schooling infrastructure: it must actively support health and wellbeing, not simply academic attainment.
Sports and extra-curricular facilities are increasingly recognised as strategic assets within this wider agenda, shaping daily habits, influencing physical and mental health outcomes, while connecting to the communities they serve. The Department for Education’s evolving specification, including greater emphasis on outdoor learning environments, signals a broader appreciation of how the physical environment supports development beyond the classroom.
At the same time, local use and income-generating models are gaining renewed attention. While these may unlock significant opportunity, they also introduce operational and regulatory complexities that must be addressed at the outset. To deliver long-term impact, planning must add a whole-system lens.
Education and health converging
The relationship between education and sport has never been entirely separate. The Department for Education has continued to invest in internal sports provision through rebuilding programmes, often aligned with standards informed by bodies such as Sport England. However, external facilities and community integration have historically received more variable attention, particularly where existing provision was assumed to be sufficient. What has changed is the policy context around those facilities.
Through initiatives such as the Sport England Movement Fund, national investment is increasingly targeted at tackling inactivity and health inequality. Funding models are placing greater emphasis on place-based impact, rather than standalone capital projects. In parallel, the UK’s introduction of tighter HFSS (high fat, salt and sugar) regulations has restricted the promotion and advertising of unhealthy food, particularly around children. This reflects a broader policy convergence around physical activity and preventative health. Taken together, these agendas reposition education estates as critical health environments. Schools are no longer simply centres of academic delivery, they are frontline infrastructure in the national health strategy.
Shared community value
In our work, supporting early engagement and recognising that leisure facilities can deliver value far beyond the school day is vital. The re-emergence of structured communal use agreements marks a great shift. Properly designed, these arrangements enable facilities to serve both students and local residents, maximising utilisation.
In the past, rising DBS requirements, operational risk, insurance complexity and maintenance pressures led many institutions to withdraw community access. The result was predictable: underused facilities, deteriorating assets and missed opportunities for local engagement. Now, new operating models are helping to rebalance that equation. Pay-to-use facilities, including commercially viable additions such as padel courts, can generate income streams that support maintenance and lifecycle investment. Hybrid delivery models, combining school-led access with specialist operators, are also gaining traction. However, increased access inevitably brings greater scrutiny. Expectations, from safeguarding and inclusion, to carbon performance and governance, are higher than ever. These cannot be retrofitted. They must be embedded into feasibility studies and procurement strategy from the outset.
Social value at scale
Across the country and within our work at Gleeds, we are seeing examples of underutilised education land being transformed into genuine community assets. For schools and higher education institutions alike, high-quality leisure facilities deliver multi-layered benefits. They enhance curriculum delivery by enabling a broader and more engaging physical education offer, while also supporting student wellbeing through improved physical and mental health outcomes. Simultaneously, they act as a clear differentiator in increasingly competitive student recruitment environments, where the quality of campus experience plays a growing role in choice. Beyond the institution itself, well-designed and accessible sports provision strengthens the role of education providers as civic anchors. In areas of deprivation, education-led sports hubs may represent the primary, and sometimes only, access point to safe, inclusive physical activity spaces. In that context, the design and governance of these facilities become a matter of social infrastructure, not optional enhancement.
With this in mind,
Education leisure facilities should no longer be viewed as peripheral or standalone components of an estate strategy. By aligning education capital investment with public health objectives and community engagement from the earliest stages, clients can deliver facilities that are financially sustainable and, perhaps more importantly, socially impactful. A whole-system approach demands robust business modelling and an integrated view of lifecycle cost and social return. But the reward is significant: institutions that do more, the wider health of the nation.
