Building Schools for the Future?
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The cost of bidding is said to be between £2 and £3 million pounds per consortium and government has real concerns about the capacity in the sector to deliver the programme.
How many BSF hits will consortia funders take before they decide that other projects are more attractive? Will a buoyant market, not least because of the Olympics, mean that BSF is just not an attractive proposition for the industry?
Timescales are incredibly compressed. Batches, typically of three to six schools, are being designed in just three or four months. Can this really be enough time to engage users and come up with designs which are truly fit for purpose?
On top of their need to design and deliver new schools to a very short timetable, each winning consortium is being judged not only on the quality of the buildings, but the educational transformation they deliver.
Given that there seems to be a degree of confusion about what ‘transformation’ actually means, is it possible that, without having some input to what actually happens in the classroom, a BSF consortium can possibly be held to account?
As BSF beds in, perhaps some of these questions will be answered. For now, the industry is expected to take a huge leap of faith. Can this process really deliver schools for the future? Let’s hope so; not least because a generation of young people are depending on it.