Measuring the added value of housing for primary education

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to develop an instrument that provides insight in the added value of a school for primary education, from the perspective of different stakeholders. The following groups are considered stakeholders: municipality, school board, environment, parents and children. An instrument like this is needed in order to be able to measure the effect of an intervention within an experiment. The intervention is about decentralizing the available financial resources from the municipality to the school boards.Design/Methodology/approach - In order to find a measuring instrument, a literature study has been done to the aspects on which added value can be rated for the different stakeholders. Since 'value' has a different meaning for the various stakeholders, these aspects have been searched for in literature related to various fields, namely Business Administration, Finance, CREM and FM. The instrument will be calibrated in a follow-up study using interviews. In addition, the Delphi method will be applied.Findings = The research has given information that can help build up a usefull and well founded instrument to measure the added value of school buildings for the different stakeholders. Apart from the financial issues (such as costs per square meter), which are interesting only to part of the stakeholders, other aspects were found that can help measure the perceived value for the other stakeholders (such as: employee satisfaction, innovations, flexibility, market share, etc). Furthermore, is seems desirable to apply real estate strategies with regard to (portfolios of) school buildings.Originality/value - There are no publications yet on instruments that measure the added value experienced by different stakeholders with regard to school buildings. In practice, financial exploitation of school buildings when it comes to value is only about book value and depreciations. By measuring the added value (for the other stakeholders) through other aspects as well, one gets a better overall picture of the actual output of the building. With the insights gained through this measurement, a more extensive initial investment in a school building might be justified. The instrument can also be of value during negotiations on spending/dividing financial means for housing between school boards and municipalities. Thus, the value of this instrument is more comprehensive than just the use of it in the experiment that will be carried out in the framewor