No schools for the future

By Jim Sweetman / @jimbo9848

The coalition’s decision to axe the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme was as inevitable as it was politically motivated but the execution was botched. The seven hundred or so schools in the programme where funds had already been provided or were under construction were given the green light to continue but another seven hundred projects were immediately cut. The problem was that the DFE did not know how far advanced many schemes were or what the cancellation costs might entail. To be fair, that was partly because of a 2010 rush to get schemes approved before a general election but it was also because the DFE wanted an element of surprise which consultations would have lost. Providing an incomplete list was a failing but publishing an inaccurate one was shameful. The list was amended publicly five times but the controversy over that and the subsequent apologies should not hide the political intent which lay behind it.

The Local Government Association reckoned that the abandonment of schemes could cost up to £200 million and the construction industry estimated that it had lost around £100 million in bids which have gone nowhere. This is not the end of the process and a further review of capital spending between now and 2015 has also been introduced headed, rather oddly, by leading figures from the retail industry.

All of the confusion may, by accident or design, have helped the coalition. The uncertainty (and the half promises rapidly withdrawn) now makes it possible for the odd school in the right marginal or favoured constituency to be rescued. There are over a hundred decisions still to be made pending individual reviews and that has limited local opposition. The chaos has also allowed academy proposals which address social disadvantage to be quietly put on the backburner while those which create the new academies (outstanding schools in areas of social advantage) can be funded. New free schools can also be funded from another budget.

The BSF programme covered new buildings, major refurbishments and rebuilding of the ICT infrastructure. Modernisation came under another heading. With an investment of over £50 billion running on to 2023 from its 2004 start, the programme had the capacity to transform the face of maintained education. And, its continuance in a period of recession was a boost to the construction industry and to local economies in areas of social deprivation. However, the fact that it represented around 30% of capital spending in education on a limited range of projects made it an easy target. The cancellation has immediately saved £170 million for the DFE.

It was an easier target because the programme has been more expensive than anticipated and widely criticised. Partnership for Schools (PFS) is the arm’s-length organisation charged with delivering the programme and it has always been full of good intentions about sustainability, cutting edge design, the use of technology and the need for extensive consultation. All of this has slowed down the programme. In the early years, private finance initiative (PFI) funding was explored and that was a cul-de-sac which led to more delays. Along the way, PFS was liberal with its money. For example, it paid almost £1 million a year to the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) design advice service when one would have expected architects to be queuing up to design new schools while critics remembered how, in the post-war school rebuilding programme, local authorities used the same architectural designs for more than one school to achieve significant economies.

However, every BSF school is a unique project. PFS provided coherence and secured its own future through framework agreements with construction companies and legal advisers so that local authorities were presented with an approved list of contractors. For the construction companies, being on the list was a step on the ladder to some lucrative contracts. It also took a lot of the pace out of the process. A preferred contractor was in less of a rush and harder to tie to deadlines than one awarded the work in open competition.

The Public Accounts Committee was extremely critical of the programme in June 2009. Of the two hundred schools planned to be completed by early 2009 only forty-two were finished. Staff costs at Partnership for Schools were high and the organisation was accused of complacency and an inability to manage the pace of projects. There were question marks over soaring costs for individual projects as well.

Ed Balls has been well-positioned in terms of knowledge to attack the ending of the programme. His team has inside knowledge of the schools which are still using temporary classrooms or are hopelessly overcrowded. But his period at the department is also susceptible to the criticism that it accepted the weasel words from PFS and did not take sufficiently rigorous action to keep the programme on track.

Perhaps the worst outcome is that, although the coalition has handled this badly, it is going to benefit from the completion of almost 1000 major rebuilding projects over the next few years once new academies and free schools are factored in. If more projects are lost in the upcoming financial review then the local authorities can take the blame. One of the first rules of politics is to deliver within the lifetime of a parliament and the BSF programme ignored that at its peril.