When Knowsley council set out to analyse the relationship of pupils, teachers and stakeholders with school buildings, what emerged, particularly from young people, was a feeling that their buildings "disrespected them". How does a local authority harness Building Schools for the Future to tackle such disaffection? The prospect may seem daunting, given the sheer scale of the project and the radical approach that is mandatory. "You have a whole generation of people in schools and local authorities who have become so absorbed by a 'patch and mend' approach that the very scale of BSF takes time to sink in. BSF requires you to think like Brunel," says Mike Rees, Knowsley's head of policy and strategy for children's services.
Schools minister Jim Knight also acknowledges the challenge to local authorities. "BSF will be the biggest capital project that many have experienced, or will experience at any time in their career. The confidence to procure with hundreds of millions of pounds can be quite daunting." Partnerships for Schools (PfS), the non-departmental body set up to deliver BSF, is, says Knight, well-placed to help. "They have credibility with local authorities, the market, and the technical partners; the PfS team understands both the public and private sectors."
Local authorities apply for BSF in twoyear bands over the lifetime of the project; schools have been designated from A (highest priority) to E, based on the number of pupils receiving free school meals and on GCSE attainment. Within each band, there are three "waves". Efforts have already been made to simplify the process, says Russell Andrews, director of education and planning at PfS. "Eighteen months ago, we took a stock check of all the reasons why the 30 initial Band A projects were slipping; and most of them were slipping." PfS identified a lack of local authority capacity in three areas: experience, sufficient staff to run the project, and budget.
For Band B, PfS applied a "readiness test" to make sure that these potential problem areas were under control. The test allows authorities to remain in their allocated band, but gives the possibility of moving to a different time slot within that band if more preparation time is needed. PfS also scrapped the requirement for a "strategic business case". "These would run to 150 or 200 pages, take months to prepare, and they weren't much use: schools didn't understand them and nor did markets," says Andrews. "Instead, we have introduced a 30-page strategy for change written around key areas that include raising standards, personalised learning, 14-19 learning, special needs, inclusion and change management."
This more focused approach, says Andrews, has been an "overwhelming success", so much so that there is a possibility that local authorities which can write an effective strategy for change may be brought forward within BSF.
Support for local authorities has also been beefed up. "We have put in place a pre-engagement support phase in the two-year window just before the local authorities come into BSF," says Andrews. "This consists of workshops, surgeries and action-led conferences. It has totally changed the culture of engagement; instead of local authorities feeling BSF is being 'done to them', we are making sure we are listening, learning and supporting." Each authority has a "key relationship manager", a project director who is a dedicated contact throughout the 30-month application process.
One early criticism of PfS was that few of its staff had a local authority background; over the past two years there has been a deliberate recruitment policy to redress this, including Andrews himself, who worked on BSF within the Nottingham local authority. "It is very challenging to run alongside your day job," he says.
Knowsley was ahead of the game when it came to Building Schools for the Future; forward-thinking councillors had recognised that investment in education was on the political cards as far back as 1998, the year they began trying to envisage the "school of the future", in partnership with Liverpool University. The council set up an independent Schools' Commission and produced two wide-ranging reports and a strategy for the future. "By the time BSF was announced in 2004, we were in a strong position to be early beneficiaries," says Knowsley's Rees. "The challenge for the local authorities and schools is to be an excellent client. We have found that prospective private sector partners are far more comfortable with a clear brief and a client that is clear in its objectives."
Pertinent questions
Knowsley is a Wave 1 authority and Rees says that the early months of the programme were hard going. "If you look at the report of the Education and Select Committee on BSF last year it asked some very pertinent questions around the subject of 'education transformation'. I think government policy in the past two or three years has got closer to the core of this argument, but in 2004 there was no clear consensus." He adds that the council could also have done with far more support around establishing the link between education transformation and building design; Knowsley found that organisations such as the British Council for School Environments were an "invaluable" help.
Knowsley has now appointed its BSF partners and is preparing to move on to the next stage. What advice would the council pass on? "Our advice to local authorities entering into BSF is not to shy away from a radical debate about the future of education," says Mike Rees. "The debate has to be led by the needs of young people and how their learning can be better supported. Rebuilding a traditional school, only shinier and cleaner, is not going to meet the challenges of the 21st century."
