Case study: Building Schools for the Future

Assignment

Capita was commissioned by DfES to study each of the LAs included in Wave One of the Building Schools for the Future (BFS) programme.

·The project was to challenge and support the LAs, ensuring that their educational visions were in alignment with national policy drives.

Project details

A senior consultant was allocated to each of the LAs. For each LA, the consultant interviewed senior officers across all relevant strategic areas and studied policy documentation. Each LA was advised in terms of ensuring their BSF proposals were likely to lead to a transformation in Secondary education.

A key element was to ensure that each LA was considering how Academies would be included within their proposals.

LAs were also advised to include proposals relating to the co-location of Special schools within mainstream Secondary, to support inclusion of pupils with SEN.

There was an emphasis on the need for new and refurbished Secondary schools to consider their role in offering services to the Community and contributing to the delivery of integrated Children’s Services. This was before most LAs had completed their restructuring along these lines.

Outcomes

The main outcome was that Wave One LAs were prepared for producing Strategic Business Cases for their Secondary School provision which enabled them to pass through to Outline Business Cases, and the design and realization of new and extensively refurbished schools. In some cases it pointed to the need for further work in LAs to meet government demands for transformation and to highlight the importance of Academies within the programme.

The work met the project needs, and enabled Wave One of BSF to progress and for future waves to be introduced.

Lessons learned

The principal lesson was that LAs need substantial support and challenge to enable them to ensure that the reorganisation of Secondary School provision is transformational in its impact on children, young people and families.

The project also identified a clear methodology for ensuring that all the possible ways of improving Secondary provision can be included within individual programmes.