Why do so many British schools look the same?

When I moved to the UK as a teenager, I enrolled at the local college to do my A levels. I found the building ugly, uninspiring and decrepit, and they’ve since knocked it down and built expensive flats on the site. But I couldn’t help noticing that the high schools I could have gone to instead were very similar. British schools all seemed to look the same, with their boxy shapes and coloured panels.

Thirty years later I find myself visiting schools on a regular basis. I went to four differen...