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. 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. 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.
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.
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.
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. 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'. They noted that it has been possible to be selected for a PFI scheme without a high quality design.
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. 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. This may well change as schools work towards the objectives set out in the Sustainable Schools Strategy and also be influenced by the findings of the Zero Carbon Task Force.
To counter some of this criticism and to celebrate the many positive aspects of the BSF programme, Partnerships for Schools hosted in November 2008 the first annual "Excellence in BSF Awards". Awards were made for a wide range of aspects of the initiative. Full details of the awards are available at the PfS website
Read more about this topic: Building Schools For The Future
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