4 We undertook seven evaluative case studies of Local Authorities undertaking BSF projects to obtain local views on:
■ local Authority objectives for BSF and commitment to the programme;
■ the benefits and disadvantages of the BSF approach;
■ the cost effectiveness of BSF;
■ how BSF performance is measured locally;
■ the performance of the national delivery bodies;
■ the working relations between the Local Authority and private sector partner;
■ local capacity;
■ the benefits and disadvantages of the procurement process; and
■ the engagement of local stakeholders.
5 We visited a cross section of Local Authorities designed to give us an insight into different approaches to BSF (Figure 25 overleaf).
6 For each case study, we undertook two-hour semi-structured interviews, on the topics above, with each of (i) Council leaders, (ii) senior officers, and (iii) project managers with the Local Authority, (iv) General Managers from the LEP, (v) team leaders from the private sector partner, (vi) the PfS project director, and (vii) other relevant stakeholders.
7 We reviewed documents held by PfS, including business cases and management information, to understand the background for each case study and to gain an understanding of the process and PfS monitoring.
8 We also held three focus groups at six of the seven case studies of (i) school leaders across the Authority, and (ii) staff and (iii) pupils from a single school undergoing renewal. The focus groups used a topic guide focusing on participants' opinions of the programme, their progress and challenges to date and what they want out of their new BSF schools. The seventh set of focus groups, at Lewisham, was cancelled due to a teachers' strike. Our focus groups were facilitated by a consultant from KPMG, with a member of the National Audit Office team as an observer.
9 We did not review individual contracts or the performance of Local Government.
25 | Criteria for choosing case studies | ||||||
Local Authority | BSF wave | Region | Stage at time of our visit | Urban/Rural | Capital funding as at October 2008 £m | ||
Pathfinder and 4 | South West | First schools built | Urban | Yes | 235 | ||
London | Building first schools | Urban | Yes | 90 | |||
1 and 4 | North West | Building first schools | Urban | No | 462 | ||
1 | Midlands | First schools built | Urban | No | 86 | ||
1 | North West | Building first schools | Semi-rural | Yes | 205 | ||
3, 4 and 6 | South East | Selecting partner | Semi-rural | Yes | 4391 | ||
5 | London | Writing strategy | Urban | Yes | 311 | ||
Source: National Audit Office methodology scoping papers |
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NOTE 1 Not including Wave 6 funding. | |||||||
10 We undertook three further visits to Local Authorities and their private sector partners in October 2008 at the request of the Department to ascertain the strength of claims that Local Education Partnerships were overcoming issues raised in our seven evaluative case studies. Because the Local Authorities for these further visits were not selected by the National Audit Office, our findings from them have been separately treated in the report and not extrapolated or merged with findings from the case studies.