I kinda felt like the original felt more like the kind of desk you were going for, any of those desks I've ever seen personally have always been complete metal under the wooden top. I do think making it more decorative is nice, but trying to make it feel like it was made of a different material below the top could help to portray it better.
It's decently readable as a desk as long as you have the knowledge of the area being in a classroom before hand, I think designing the stage in a way that harkens back to the environment they would be in would help make it clear what it is.
For example lining up many of these areas like this next to each other in the level, to get the feeling of how many desks are lined up in rows in a classroom.

Unrelated to the desk itself but, in this shot it feels like the background is competing for attention from anything in the foreground. The scene is readable and such but it feels a bit hard to focus on the stuff in the foreground. Perhaps lowering contrast/detail of the background a bit could help with this, although it's mainly the decorative patterns at the bottom that are so distracting.