About the Learning Estate

Our learning estate refers to all of our school buildings – nursery, primary and secondary and includes both mainstream and specialist provision. 

East Lothian’s school buildings vary in age, scale and size of school population. Our oldest school building is over 140 years old, while school rolls can vary from 26 pupils in our smallest school to 1,116 in our largest. Many of our schools have been extended or completely redeveloped over the years.

As part of the Scottish Government's Learning Estate Strategy, all local authorities have to review their learning estate in order to develop a Learning Estate Improvement Plan (LEIP).

The LEIP outlines how we intend to realise our ambitions to develop a modern, safe, sustainable learning estate that enhances and supports communities, whilst improving the lives of families in an equitable manner. It helps us to inform our investment priorities for our learning estate and will support any bids for funding. It also provides a clear and transparent rationale for how we will approach decisions relating to our learning estate and the factors we would take into account.

In developing our Learning Estate Improvement Plan we have: 

• asked for, and listened to, the views of our staff, learners, school and wider communities. Their input has been vital to understand their priorities and ambitions for our schools and is reflected in our Learning Estate Improvement Plan
• taken account of national guidance in this area in particular the 10 guiding principles set out within Scotland's Learning Estate Strategy
• considered how we can best meet the curriculum to offer the best possible opportunities to our children and young people within their school
• considered how we align with regional strategic plans and priorities - for example, regional economic and workforce data
• worked across council departments to ensure that we are considering every aspect including digital connectivity and energy efficiency
• made sure that our plan reflects the financial realities that the council operates in and the challenges it faces