Building Schools for the Future

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Building Schools for the Future (BSF) is the name of the UK Government's investment programme in secondary school buildings in England. The program is very ambitious in its costs, timescales and objectives, with politicians from all parties supportive of the principle but questioning the wisdom and cost effectiveness of the scheme.^[1] The delivery of the BSF programme will be overseen by Partnerships for Schools (PfS), a non departmental public body formed through a joint venture between the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) (formerly the Department for Education and Skills), Partnerships UK and private sector partners. Fourteen Local Education Authorities were asked to take part in the Government's first wave of the Building Schools for the Future programme for the fiscal year 2005/6.^[2]

In 2007 the programme was complemented by the announcement of a BSF Primary Capital Programme, with £1.9 billion to spend on 675 building projects for primary in England over three years.^[3]

1 Management
2 Funding and Budgets
- 2.1 Primary Education
- 2.2 Secondary Education
3 Criticism
4 New schools and major upgrades provided
- 4.1 New Schools/Colleges
- 4.2 Rebuilt Schools/Colleges
5 See also
6 Notes and References
7 External links

[edit] Management

The project has 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 eight months into the role. He was replaced five months later by Tim Byles, a head of a minor government efficiency quango and a former Norfolk county councillor.

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

[edit] Funding and Budgets

[edit] Primary Education

Primary schools were initially not included in BSF, although in March 2006 it was announced that a parallel programme - the Primary Capital Programme (PCP) - would be starting for primary schools and schools for primary-age special needs pupils. Rather than allocating money by authority in waves, it is intended that there will be regional pilot schemes in 2008, leading to a broader approach whereby all authorities can apply for funding from 2009.^[4] Funding to Local Authorities will only be confirmed once they have submitted and had approved their 'Strategy for Change' (SfC) that describes how they will address the PCP priorities.

Thus 23 local authorities will initially have access to £6.5 million each in order to refurbish a primary school, before widening access to an overall budget of £1.9 billion, with the expectation of starting 675 primary school building projects over the next three years.^[3]

[edit] Secondary Education

The programme involves the decentralisation of funds to Local Education Partnerships (LEPs) in order to build and improve secondary school buildings, to be supplemented by private funding. With investments of over £2 billion in the first year, across an estimated 200 schools through the country, it has been claimed as the single biggest government investment programme in education for over 50 years.^[5] The then- 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."^[2]

Capital funding available for investment in school buildings has risen sharply from £683 million in 1996-97 to £3.8 billion in 2003-04; this further increases to £4.5 billion in 2004-05 and to £5.1 billion in 2005-06, £9.3 billion over 2008-11, and £8.2 billion in 2011,^[3] ultimately costing £45 billion over 15 years in 14 'waves', or groups of authorities.^[4] BSF will be about half conventional and half Private Finance Initiative funded. Of the £2.2 billion for BSF, £1.2 billion (55.5%) will be covered by Public Finance Initiative credits.^[2] The Government plans to spend £6.3 billion on schools in 2007-08, a sixfold increase in real terms on the £683 million that was available in 1996-97 a decade prior. Around two-thirds of this funding will be spent on projects outside BSF.^[6]

Funding associated with BSF is not just limited to construction and equipment in new schools built under its project, but also improving facilities at existing schools, such as providing schools with direct capital funding to spend on buildings and ICT. Depending on their size, primary and secondary schools are receiving £34,000 and £113,000 respectively during 2007-08 for these initiatives, which equates to around £1 billion across English schools.^[6]

[edit] Criticism

Most of the major new building works are PFI-funded, which takes the construction and facilities management (but not the education provision) out of the financial control of Local Education Authorities because the construction and facilities management of a school becomes a source of revenue for the consortia involved for up to 30 years, even if the school is no longer needed.^[7] While promoted as a huge investment in public services within Secondary Education, it may in fact be the reverse, by allowing a consortium made up of a financiers, construction companies and IT companies to take away control of public assets from the local authority.

This may handicap future changes, as designers currently face difficulties in trying to predict how learning environments will evolve, exacerbated by poor levels of participation by governors, teachers, pupils, and the community in the design process. The scale of the building programme is far larger than the capacity of the current pool of experienced architects and designers, while the educators running the developments have very little prior experience of commissioning such major construction works before. There is little sharing of best practice and learning between authorities, schools, contractors, suppliers and others involved in BSF, and timescales that discourage thorough up-front planning.^[4]^[8] The funds provided under this programme are used for materials and building infrastructure (usually including repairs and on-going maintenance) whilst funding provided for teaching continues in the normal way, except in the case of academies where funding comes directly from the Secretary of State. A consequence of the PFI element of the programme is that recurrent and strategic maintenance of school buildings is addressed within the contract, which reverses the tendency for school governing bodies to under-allocate funds for these aspects of asset management, leading to high levels of backlog maintenance existing at many schools.^{[citation needed]}.

Bidders for funding claim that the work needed to put together a bid is onerous and very costly, and requires the navigation of many government bodies. the coordinating body, Partnerships for Schools, is reportedly focused on construction procurement without a full understanding of all the other factors involved.^[4]

There have been accusations that the relationship between the quality of infrastructure and the quality of pupil education has not been clearly demonstrated; many of the schools at the top of the league tables are ancient schools with mostly ancient buildings. The House of Commons Select Committee has expressed concerns that, whilst this investment in spaces to support learning is unprecedented, the enormous scale of the project is not being managed to ensure that its scope and aims remain appropriate. There have been no clear or consistent objectives set down to judge how well the project is progressing, or to establish if this is the best way to spend £45 billion on education. 800 schools most in need had already been prioritised and refurbished in the years immediately before this programme started; it was unclear what the current need is, and how the money previously spent would fit in with the broad untargetted approach of BSF.^[4]

The selection of some schools for demolition and rebuilding has been controversial; notably there have been criticisms in the architectural press over the demolition of the brutalist Pimlico School, with many calls for the building to be protected by being placed on the register of listed buildings.^[9] The designs of 10 of the fist 11 schools, including Pimlico, have been granted planning permission even though they have been described by CABE as 'mediocre' or 'not yet good enough'.^[10] They noted that it has been possible to be selected for a PFI scheme without a high quality design.^[11]

The upgrade programme is taking place at a time when building standards are being substantially rewritten to incorporate improved energy efficiency and green construction methods. Schools are claimed to emit about 15% of the public sector's carbon footprint in the UK. New schools and refurbishment projects are required to perform an assessment in accordance with the Building Research Establishment's BREEAM Schools standard that checks against environmental performance targets for new and refurbished school buildings.^[12] However there are concerns that commercial imperatives will mean that there are no incentives to exceed these standards, and the subsequent works are mainly being designed against the cheaper but less energy-efficient old building standards, with very little cash being set aside to meet pending standards.^[13]

[edit] New schools and major upgrades provided

The BSF programme has provided funding for the construction of entirely new schools and colleges, as well as rebuilding existing ones:

[edit] New Schools/Colleges

Bristol Brunel Academy - one of the first to open in September 2007, formerly Speedwell Technology College
Elmgreen School - a completely new school in the Borough of Lambeth, opened September 2007
Haringey - Sixth Form Centre - a new sixth form college