The speed of delivery

2.1  As of 31 December 2008, 42 schools have been built under BSF and construction is underway on a further 94 (Figure 9). The rate of school building is planned to increase over the next few years, with 54 newly built or refurbished schools due to be opened in 2009 and 121 in 2010. To renew all 3,500 schools by 2023 requires the renewal of 250 schools a year on average from 2011 onwards.

2.2  Each Local Authority's first wave of schools takes around seven years from project initiation to opening the last school in the wave, including two years on scoping, two years in procurement and collectively three years in construction (about 18 to 24 months per school). Once they have set up a LEP, each project is expected to take around a year to scope and 18 to 24 months to build.

2.3  The rate of school building is expected to accelerate as more Local Authorities finish negotiating contracts with their private sector partner. Twenty-five Local Authorities had finished procurement by December 2008. PfS aims for ten Local Authorities to finish negotiations in 2009 and the year after. PfS is currently working with 80 Local Authorities, out of a total of 149 that the Department hopes will eventually join the programme.

2.4  To meet the ambition of including all schools by 2020, the programme requires (i) 8 to 9 new Local Authorities to enter the programme on average every year for the next 8 years; and (ii) doubling the number of schools that are in procurement and construction at any one time over the next three years.

2.5  The programme started more slowly than the Department expected. In 2004, the Department announced that 200 new BSF schools would be open by December 2008.² The current forecast is for the 200th school to open in September 2010, a delay of 21 months. The main reasons are that the Department underestimated:

■ the time needed to establish PfS and launch the programme;

■ the time Local Authorities would need to develop robust strategies; and

■ the time needed to establish a LEP.

Figure 10 shows 2004 expectations compared to current forecasts.

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2  Building schools for the future: A new approach to capital investment, Department for Education and Skills, 2004.