Building Schools for the Future

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Building Schools for the Future is the name of the UK Government's investment programme in school buildings.

The programme involves the decentralisation of funds to local "partnerships" in order to build and improve secondary school buildings, to be supplemented by private funding. Prime Minister Tony Blair said the investment "will see the entire secondary school building stock upgraded and refurbished in the greatest school renewal programme in British history."^[1]

While promoted as a huge investment in public services within Secondary Education - it may in fact be the reverse - allowing a consortium made up of a banks, construction companies, and IT companies to take control of public assets, and away form the local authority.

One criticism of the scheme is that removes control from schools and local authorities, and the makes the school a source of profit for the consortia involved, for an extended period - of up to 25 years.

Little information about the inner working of the system is in the public domain - and much once public information is now "commercially in confidence" so the exact costs, liabilities and procedures are now a closed subject.

The program is very ambitious both in its costs, timescales and objectives. However opposition politicians in both the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties have raised question about the wisdom and cost effectiveness of the scheme.

Bidders are not happy claiming that the work needed to put together a bid is onerous and very costly.

The project as been dogged by sporadic or no management at the top - with Richard Bowker (Chair and Chief Executive of the Strategic Rail Authority) abandoning his post just 8 months into the role. He was replaced 5 months later by Tim Byles - a head of a minor government efficiency quango.