Sustainable Schools and Building Schools for the Future - Children, Schools and Families Committee Contents


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)

TIM BYLES

14 JULY 2008

  Q40 Chairman: On behalf of members of the Committee, I welcome the next witness, Tim Byles. Some of us know that he has a passion for Shakespeare in schools, and some of us know that he was formerly the chief executive of a local authority in the eastern region. Welcome to our proceedings. You have heard a lot of the previous session, and we are going to give you a chance. You saw what was said in our report, which was not badly received when it came out. You heard from the evidence that Ty, Richard and the Barnsley people were giving that not all the criticisms in our report have been answered. Where are we with BSF, from where you are sitting?

  Tim Byles: Thank you, Chairman. I am glad to be in front of the Committee again and to have the opportunity to brief you on the progress in the programme since I last gave evidence, back in December 2006.

  Q41  Chairman: You had just been appointed, had you not?

  Tim Byles: Indeed. I was just about to refer to that. It was a particular pleasure, if a bracing one. I had been in the job for only five weeks when I appeared last time, and quite a lot has happened since. I would like to take the opportunity to mention some of it. As you will see from the short handout that we have circulated, when I arrived at Partnerships for Schools in November 2006, two local authorities had been through the procurement process and selected a private sector partner. Today, that number stands at 21. Then, a few early quick-win schools had opened their doors; today, we have 13 open, with that number set to be more than double this autumn and rise to about 200 schools per annum in the next few years. Some 80 of the 150 top-tier authorities are now in the programme, and about 1,000 schools are somewhere between design and delivery in BSF. So there has been significant progress since I was last here. Indeed, 2007-08 was the first financial year in which PfS met or exceeded all its delivery targets. I am confident that we are on track to repeat that progress this year, after a slow start in BSF, which was the subject of much of our discussion last time. Clearly, success should not be measured just in terms of deals done or bricks and mortar. When I arrived at PfS, much of the public scrutiny of the programme had focused purely on its time scales. It was welcome to have a discussion in the Committee, and read in your report, about having a focus on quality as well and recognising the potential of the programme to help transform life chances for millions of young people. As the delivery agency for BSF and for academies, it is the job of Partnerships for Schools to ensure that the programme delivers on time and on budget. We are on track to do that, but it is more important that the programme delivers on its ultimate objective, which is to help transform educational delivery for every young person, no matter what their background. That focus on quality is what has driven a number of changes that we have made to the processes that help to deliver BSF, and it is helpful to think about those in three parts. There is a difference between early projects, which are often focused on in BSF, and those that are going through the system now. If I may, I shall mention two or three changes that we have introduced. First, on pre-procurement, we have tried to make sure that the vision of the local authority is sufficiently ambitious and bold, and that the local authority is ready to hit the ground running early, on entry to the programme. You heard from the previous witnesses about some issues in early procurement, where the procurement process was being used as a means of refining the objectives of the programme. Those pre-procurement changes have improved the time by up to 30% for local authorities—a reduction of nearly six months through starting earlier and being better prepared. Secondly, on procurement, we have streamlined the process within EU requirements, which will deliver significant savings to BSF at a programme level—up to £250 million. That will help to ensure that the market is vibrant and that there are enough players to compete, in order to deliver a value-for-money solution. Thirdly, we are now engaged in a review of the operational phase, checking and challenging how local education partnerships are operating in practice, and how they are delivering value for money to the public purse. Those three changes have secured some significant reductions in the delivery timetable—up to eight months in total—and cost savings. I am more encouraged, however, because they provide a much better platform with which to ensure that BSF delivers learning environments in which every young person can do their best and can reach for excellence. We are already starting to see tangible results from that through independent review work. The National Foundation for Educational Research has conducted some research on Bristol Brunel academy, our first local education partnership-delivered school, which has given tangible and significant improvements in attendance, aspirations and staying-on rates. We are seeing good results on refurbishment schemes as well. For example, in Sunderland, the Oxclose School has already seen an improvement on GCSE results, from 24% of pupils attaining A to C grades in GCSEs, including English and maths, up to 41% last summer, and the forecast is that that will exceed to 50% this summer. The last point that I would like to mention in these opening remarks is to highlight the importance that we give to learning lessons, gathering lessons learned, and sharing them in the BSF community. We have increased our activity on that front significantly over the last 20 months: introducing a national learning network for BSF; re-launching our website, with dedicated spaces for learning from experience, from which e-mail alerts are issued to the BSF community as new lessons are learned; a quarterly publication sent to all local authorities and the private sector, highlighting learning and experience; a comprehensive calendar of conferences, including sector-specific ones on ICT and design already this year; and we have started a programme of BSF open days, where local authorities and the private sector will be invited to a new BSF school, to hear direct from the partners involved in delivery, the challenges and issues that they face. The first one is to take place in the Michael Tippett school in Lambeth this autumn, a school that I think you visited recently, Chairman. Finally, for the avoidance of doubt, there is to be a post-occupancy evaluation of every BSF school, as we announced earlier this year. The gathering of that kind of information is important for the sharing of best practice—what has worked and what has worked less well. I am very keen that we do that. When I gave evidence to the Committee back in 2006, I made it clear then that we would continue to learn throughout BSF. That is still my firm belief. It is about helping to transform lives, and we at BSF will continue to work with and challenge local authorities, the private sector partners and ourselves, to do our best to ensure that we make the most of this opportunity.

  Chairman: Let us start by drilling down on the procurement process.

  Q42  Mr Carswell: I have a couple of questions. There is a massive amount of expenditure, putting a lot of our money on to the balance sheet of a few big corporations. Some people say that when it comes to defence procurement, a few small contractors have got the process rigged in their favour. Is that happening with this? Are there a few lucky ones who put all that public money on to their balance sheets because there are barriers to entry?

  Tim Byles: No, that is not true of BSF. We currently have 21 active bidding consortiums into BSF and we have three new entrants coming into the market at the moment. An issue for us, as we think about the way in which the programme rolls out, is how to balance the breadth of market activity with the capacity and ability to learn. We are not seeing the reduction that some other programmes have seen. You mentioned defence, and health is another example where there is quite quickly a consolidation down to a small number of consortiums. That has not been the case so far in BSF.

  Q43  Mr Carswell: How can that be? If you constrain the supplier in any market, the seller sets the terms of trade. PricewaterhouseCoopers did a report that, for example, allowed for more comprehensive pre-qualification for bidding consortiums, and more focus on effective partnering issues. Those are all barriers to entry, are they not?

  Tim Byles: I do not think so. We have been careful to try to ensure that they are not barriers to entry. What is interesting is that, since the launch and approval of the procurement review, we have seen three new entrants. A range of factors influences activity in the market. Success is one—we have seen some people moving in and out—and the balance of the consortium is a second, but we are certainly not seeing a reduction on the basis of that activity.

  Q44  Mr Carswell: Do you have any data, which we could perhaps make available afterwards, that would show exactly how the money had been spent—where the direct recipients are and what range of businesses are getting a share of the market?

  Tim Byles: Yes, we can certainly publish, and do publish, the successful consortiums by local authority area, as they achieve success in BSF. There is not a problem in making that available. We also publish the scale of activity earlier in the process. The process begins with a number of bidders expressing an interest. There is then a shortlisting down to three and then two bidders, prior to the real competition, as it were. There is no shortage of information around, in relation to the market.

  Q45  Mr Carswell: In order to squeeze better value for money out of every tax pound spent, is there anything that you would like actively to do now that would expand the range of bidders—I am not talking about what has happened, but going forward—perhaps even letting in small contractors who would not get a bite of the cherry?

  Tim Byles: Yes, I am keen to find ways in which small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as a large consortium, can participate in BSF. We are already seeing that through the supply chain and through the relationships with the larger consortiums. We are also seeing a number of middle-sized builders and contractors leading the smaller schemes. There is quite a large range in the size of projects in BSF, from £80 million up to £1.5 billion. It is not a one-size-fits-all approach here. What we are trying to do is to balance the access with value for money, and with delivery and improvement of efficiency through time. The Department for Children, Schools and Families has just concluded a consultation on the second half of BSF—2007 to 2015—where we are looking at opportunities just like the ones you mention, for other entrants to bid on more targeted, smaller-scale schemes.

  Q46  Mr Carswell: So, if a smaller business came to me and said that they found that they had barriers to entry, I could bring them to you and we could work out what those barriers to entry were and how to remove them?

  Tim Byles: You certainly could. As I said, a number of smaller contractors are participating very effectively in BSF, with the flexibility that they bring. There is a need to balance value for money overall with flexibility and pace, which is often what they bring.

  Q47  Mr Carswell: The second thing on which I would be interested in your views—we looked at this earlier—is the idea of national guidelines for the design of schools locally. I am very conscious of that. This is more to get your thoughts. In the '60s and '70s everyone thought tower blocks were a good thing, and then—someone talked about leaky roofs earlier—flat roofs were everything. Today, although I will probably be hung, drawn and quartered for saying it, the fad of the moment is carbon neutrality—we may or may not be talking about that in 20 years' time. Now there is this great trend to make schools into some sort of community centre—that may or may not work. Even though people talk about flexibility and you can change the size and shape of the classroom, the fact is that there are certain preconceptions about what a school is going to be and what it is going to do. Is there not a certain danger in having national guidelines? Would there not be a smarter way of doing this, which would be somehow to allow different localities to do their own thing, giving them the freedom to develop?

  Tim Byles: I think that the issue from my perspective is to try and get the balance right between having some national standards, which build on experience across the country, and giving local flexibility to make choices that are available to the very different settings in which these schools are located. Some local authorities have a local vision that sets their BSF school in the context of a much wider economic regeneration strategy, for example. Some others want to see schools as more stand-alone elements of the community spread across a large county, for example. Both of those are fine, as far as BSF is concerned. What is not fine is if we were to try and create a situation where there was overcrowding or inadequate facilities against some measures where we are clear that we want to stimulate learning, which is why every BSF school is an extended school. That is not a one-size-fits-all measure. It allows that extension to fit with the locally owned strategy—as it does in Essex, for example—and to fit more broadly with the local delivery of the gathering of services. Those might be social care services or wider education services as the children's plan envisages; but there is a great deal to be learned in a world that needs to be increasingly flexible. So we are trying to create places that are effective in today's technology and that have the flexibility to adapt through time. We want to check that progress with the users as well as the parents, teachers and communities in which these schools sit. I am very keen that we do not have a one-size-fits-all approach and that we learn lessons for where they are working—because there are some similarities across communities and there are experiments going on in what is the best way to deliver some aspects of learning in a modern environment.

  Q48  Mr Carswell: One final question. Would you allow a school that says it is not going to have any access to any community activity, is going to go to the other extreme, is not going to worry too much about this carbon neutral stuff and is going to maybe emulate what the Victorians did? Would you allow that? That would be flexible.

  Tim Byles: It would be flexible, wouldn't it? No; on sustainability we would not, because there are some national guidelines. To pick up on some points that were made before I sat down here, BSF was not high on the sustainability agenda when it began. The Government clarified the position in relation to sustainability last year through the introduction of a 60% reduction in carbon footprint for new BSF schools. We are on a trajectory via a taskforce that I know you have heard about this afternoon to get to carbon neutral schools by 2016. So there are some national standards that local schools need to take into account, but the dimensions of the extended school is very much a discussion that we have with each local authority—and, indeed, each school—to try to set a balance and pattern of service into what is a much larger and more complex service environment locally.

  Mr Slaughter: Are we going on to educational sustainability?

  Chairman: You can go on with anything you like.

  Q49  Mr Slaughter: What has begun to interest me about the programme, which I suppose naively I originally thought was simply a modernisation and capital programme—there is nothing wrong with that at all—is how it can be used to change the whole educational approach of a local education authority. But that can be quite a political process. I am going to give you a parochial example, but it may have a wider significance; however, before I come on to it, are you aware of that? If there is a political agenda coming to you from local authorities in the way that they wish to spend these very considerable sums of money, are you alive to that and are you responding in a political way, or are you simply ticking a lot of boxes to see whether the money is being spent in a proper way?

  Tim Byles: I am certainly not responding in a political way. I am responding to the different perspectives and priorities that local areas have—and they are different, across the country. There are some givens about the national programme. It is about raising standards comprehensively, and agreeing locally through a strategy for change process—which is the shorthand we have for capturing the local education strategy and the estate strategy in a form that does drive up standards and is in the interests of every young person within a local authority area. You are right; that sounds deceptively simple. There are issues about boundaries and the migration of pupils; about diversity and choice; and about the extent to which some local authorities want to gather wider services on and around school sites. That differs, but what we are trying to have—and that I believe we are developing—is an intelligent dialogue about the aspirations of the Government, which I am there to represent, and the aspirations of the local authority and the leader and chief executive of the council, with whom we deal, as well as the director of children's services. That is why, for each BSF school, as we begin them, I visit the authority and speak to the leadership—political and official—and we reach an agreement, which is quite a formal agreement, about the process that will be gone through in order to deliver the educational changes locally. I hope that that answers your question.

  Q50  Mr Slaughter: Well, it allows me to introduce my example, which is one of my local authorities, Hammersmith and Fulham. Briefly, there are four principles that I see in the BSF programme, which they are just putting forward to Partnerships for Schools as we speak, almost. One is the downgrading of community schools and the original proposal to amalgamate three community schools in a 16-form entry, which sounded quite bizarre. The second is to expand faith schools, even though they are over-represented already in the local school economy. The third is a massive expansion in sixth forms, but with no resources going to the one successful sixth-form college in the area, and a lot of the money therefore going to the building of those sixth forms—up to seven new or expanded sixth forms—within a small local authority area over a five-year period. Finally, there is the use of the money to dispose of assets to the independent sector in order to set up independent schools. None of those principles accords with what I would necessarily want to see as a use for Government money. I thought it was for improving school standards overall, but particularly for community schools with a high percentage of free-school-meals pupils that, although they were improving greatly, were not doing so well. Taking that as a hypothetical example, how would you respond?

  Tim Byles: It sounds very hypothetical. I cannot comment on the absolute detail of that scheme, although I would be happy to talk to you separately about it. I will just look at some of the items that you have raised. We are not at all interested in the downgrading of community schools. We are interested in trying to ensure good access and good choice for every young person across the local authority area. We recently had the remit meeting, so we have commenced a process for the strategy for change that allows for further development. We have not agreed every item in it as yet. There was an eight-week process at the beginning and a 20-week process for the second part of the strategy for change. That will allow us to reach an agreement—or, indeed, a disagreement: if there is disagreement, the project will not proceed—about fair access and good opportunities for all young people. As for the hypothetical expansion of faith schools, we looked in quite a lot of detail at the pupil place numbers and the expected pupil places for each local authority area. That is a science, but it is also an art, particularly in London and especially in places like Hammersmith and Fulham, which have a large percentage of resident pupils who are educated outside the borough. We are trying to look at it in the broader sub-regional context in order to reach conclusions. If there is good evidence that we need more places in faith schools, we are capable of agreement on that, although I do not know in this specific case. On the expansion of sixth forms, we will be looking at the track record and delivery of existing institutions as well as any plans for new sixth-form places. The disposal of assets is generally a matter for the local authority, although there is a relationship between the disposal of school assets and the contribution that local authorities need to make towards the programme more generally in their areas. All those points are ones that I would expect to agree with any hypothetical Hammersmith and Fulham over this period of the strategy for change process. Those are the principles that we will look at, and we have started a process that will debate them and bring them to a conclusion before the project proceeds in earnest.

  Q51  Mr Slaughter: To conclude, even though you would obviously not be looking at this from a political point of view, let alone a party political point of view, if issues raised in that way appeared to you not to be achieving the objectives of the programme, would you at least question them?

  Tim Byles: Yes. If they were not achieving the objectives of the programme, we would not allow them to proceed. It is normally the case that in the pre-engagement and early engagement phases we are sufficiently clear about the parameters that we are dealing with, and if not, we tend not to start the process. I am hopeful that we will reach a positive conclusion in Hammersmith and Fulham, but I do not have available this afternoon the detailed points that you make.

  Mr Slaughter: I would be happy to supply them.

  Q52  Chairman: Keeping on that point, if we interviewed the Learning and Skills Council and other players, such as the Association of Colleges and so on, about the transition of two years, and the dramatically changed shape of the LSC, they would say that because of you lot in Building Schools for the Future, and because of the academies programme—because of the world that they live in, in terms of planning their future—you are encouraging local authorities to plan for the future across the piece, to have a vision, yet at the same time they, especially the further education sector, will say, "How can we plan anything?". How can the local authority plan anything, with trust schools and academies both having the potential for sixth forms, with Building Schools for the Future allowing sixth forms in their new build? It is a crazy kind of environment. Who is doing the planning? How can order be brought to that chaos?

  Tim Byles: I think there is order. I think that order is coming. Through the strategy for change process we are trying to take into account 14 to 19 provision, locate the education strategy within the broader community strategy that the local authority holds for the whole area, and for that to cover zero to 19 and beyond. We are working with the Learning and Skills Council in London, looking specifically at the joins between vocational opportunities, academic sixth-form opportunities and the rest of the secondary school agenda, in order to overcome that kind of issue and to ensure that things are connected. A single document should set out clearly what a local authority wants to achieve in a broader context in its community strategy. Within the strategy for change it says, "Here are the places that we need for this local authority, here is the mix between vocational and academic opportunities and here are the specific linkages." Each school has a strategy for change, as well as the local authority. We increasingly want to share vocational and academic resources between institutions in the locality, through clusters, federations or simply through the operation of expertise in adjacent areas. That is happening more and more, and it is a key principle of BSF to look after everybody's needs for an authority, not just for our own purposes, but for good planning generally to cover diversity and choice issues, efficiency and value for money.

  Q53  Chairman: So how do you look down and look up? You are mainly at secondary level. Do you look down to the primary level and say, "What is the quality of new build going on outside the BSF programme?" What about the environmental standards that Graham mentioned just now? Do you look up to the FE sector? When we did the last inquiry on BSF we were told that 50% of that estate had been rebuilt, often not to the high standards that BSF hopes to achieve, and certainly not in terms of environmental standards and carbon footprint. Is your good practice spilling over, down or up?

  Tim Byles: It is starting to. I do not claim that we have this solved—we do not. We have an agreement to look at the whole picture in terms of pupil numbers. Increasing numbers of local authorities use their local education partnership as a means to procure and deliver primary schools through the primary programme. We are making the connection at the strategy for change level with further education and on to higher education. We are responsible for the delivery of BSF. We do not run the primary programme. We are increasingly looking for ways to join that process up and we work actively with the Department for Children, Schools and Families to find better ways of doing so. This year we will see clearer linkages emerging and I hope that we will be able to deliver linkages beyond the strategy level with FE provision. We must allow the circulation of pupils between FE and sixth-form provision, which we already see in several strategy for change proposals. Blackpool is an example that springs to mind where we consciously have a programme that does exactly that. It allows the movement of pupils between an FE college and the seven secondary schools within the borough.

  Q54  Chairman: Tim, you have been chief executive of a big local authority. We have taken evidence from local authorities and visited them. Taking on a big BSF strategy is demanding on resources, time and staffing. At the same time, the Government are throwing open the careers service and the funding of further education, and piling on the number of things that local authorities can deliver. Do they have the capacity to do that?

  Tim Byles: When I was a local authority chief executive I was keen to have as much devolved to me as possible. In the report, I notice that you talk about the need to get that balance right. That needs to be judged carefully in terms of capacity and capability. In relation to BSF and the academies programme, there is a wider variation in capability and capacity in local authorities, which is why we try to tune our relationship accordingly. Some need more help and challenge than others, and some have a more comprehensive picture of where they want to go and how they will resource it than others. I am keen for authorities to have a programme for BSF that delivers effectively and is located within a broader strategy. I do not make an assessment of the Government's devolution of other schemes to them.

  Q55  Annette Brooke: If we could look at some of the issues that came up in the previous session—you probably heard the answers. There was a question about whether there was enough post-evaluation, and you covered that in your introduction for obvious reasons. Could you tell us a little more about the post- evaluation that is taking place? Is it looking at all those issues of involving stakeholders, or indeed at energy measurement? In other words, is it going beyond value for money for the taxpayer? I feel there are a lot of dimensions that should be looked at.

  Tim Byles: You are exactly right. There are a lot of dimensions. There is a sort of technical process. When people use the term post-occupancy evaluation, sometimes that is restricted to a very technical evaluation by technical assessors of the physical characteristics of the building. I am talking in a much broader sense. I am very keen that we use objective research information to plot our progress and to challenge us to develop further, as well as being clear about the ingredients that we can spread as best practice across the country. So we look at stakeholder research. For example, Ipsos MORI has carried out quite a widespread exercise for us this year, which we published on our website, that talks about stakeholder involvement; that was an issue that your report raised last year. It measures the extent of satisfaction and participation by parents, teachers and young people in the process. I will not go through all the details for you, but there has been a very significant shift over the last 18 months in the attitudes and perceptions of involvement among stakeholders, and the recognition that the programme needs to be seen as a whole programme—ICT, building and education transformation, all together. For example, 65% of stakeholders say that the amount of contact that they have with Partnerships for Schools is about right; 85% of stakeholders say that ICT is an integral part of the programme, and local authorities have a very high level indeed of favourable involvement at the preparation stage for BSF. So we have been checking across the stakeholder community. We have also been talking to students and head teachers. The National Foundation for Educational Research report on Bristol Brunel Academy, which I mentioned earlier, gave some very specific details, for example about reductions in bullying, feelings of safety when at school, and desire to stay on later. I would just like to give you one or two statistics from that report. The figure for those who feel safe at school at Bristol Brunel Academy most or all of the time increased from 57% to 87 % this year. Those who felt proud of their school increased from 43% to 77%. Those who said they enjoyed going to school increased from 50% to 61%. Those who perceived that vandalism was at least a bit of a problem decreased from 84% to 33%. Those who perceived that bullying was a problem decreased from 39% to 16%. Those who expect to stay on into the sixth form or to go on to the local further education college increased from 64% to 77%. We feel that those kinds of figures are significant measures of good progress at that particular school, which is why I am keen to chart it in other areas, as well as the academic and the sustainability points that you started with.

  Q56  Annette Brooke: My question in the previous session was really whether Government were giving sufficient leadership. On the face of it, it sounded as if the Government were following; in other words, at individual authority level, there was the bolt-on of environmental sustainability on the transformation, which is a mix of local authority and central Government. Apart from the money, however, what are you really adding to the outcomes?

  Tim Byles: There is quite a bit from us. If I just start from the beginning, when people are starting to plan their strategy for change process and starting to define the educational improvement strategy for that area, we spend quite a lot of time introducing resources that are not always available within a local authority, particularly in pupil place planning for example. It is very important for us that we have a view across an authority's area of how many pupils you will have for the next generation, in order to ensure that you have a good investment that is not too many or indeed too few places. So there is quite a lot of input in developing the education strategy. There is quite a lot of input in the early stage about the facilities available through ICT across the curriculum. As part of our single gateway, which was another of your recommendations that the Government have picked up, we manage the contracts with 4ps for pre-engagement work for capacity building and project management skills in authorities, with the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment in order to challenge and support good design as the process proceeds, and with the National College for School Leadership, which is there to ensure that head teachers and their leadership teams understand what it means to lead a project through BSF. So there is quite a bit at the early stage. When it comes to going out to the market and engaging with the private sector, holding bidder days and starting to develop the strategy to run through what is a complex EU procurement process, we have expert project directors who are allocated to each local authority to help both to guide and to challenge that process within the local authority to the point of financial close. When the arrangement is concluded, we have, through our sister organisation, Building Schools for the Future investments, a place on the board of the operational local educational partnerships to ensure that progress is sufficient against the timetables that we have set. There is a significant capacity constraint within local authorities in the project management area and in the negotiation and skills area. We are seeing quite a lot of movement between local authorities, so we are engaged on our own account and with 4ps in developing training and wider access to those skills so that there is sufficient out there to help to manage BSF projects. We try to target and to provide our services proportionately to the need of the local authority. We do not want to overdo it. Equally, we want to make sure that there is good progress in timing and quality for these projects.

  Q57  Annette Brooke: It all sounds quite mechanical, and I cannot see where the innovative ideas have a chance to pop through the system. How is innovation being encouraged?

  Tim Byles: We want to encourage innovation, and one way that we are finding helpful is through the engagement of young people. We use the Sorrell Foundation, through its joined-up design programme, to hold workshops, seminars and programmes that help to stimulate new ideas direct from pupils about what is important for the design of new schools. We encourage each local authority to participate in that process. We are also encouraging the design community to innovate in the way in which it produces proposals for design, and for the bidding consortium to do so as it approaches a local authority to enter into the procurement process. I would not describe that as a mechanical process, but it is a complex process. At its core, local authorities must choose a partner who will be able to respond to their aspirations locally, to deliver something that is flexible enough to respond in different local settings even within a single local authority area, to have a good relationship with the schools and communities in which they are located, and to deliver something that is effective and provides value for money on the ground.

  Chairman: We are running out of time. Paul wants to go back to something that we missed out, but need for the record. We can then get Graham to wind up.

  Q58  Paul Holmes: What are the lessons—this is partly connected with what you have just been talking about—from the one-school pathfinders?

  Tim Byles: A number. We feel that it is most effective to make investments in schools in the context of the strategy we talked about before—overall, a strategy for change. You can go in and look at a school that has a particular need and sort it out in the individual school. Unless that sits in a broader strategy, the investment, if replicated too widely, would not provide the optimum solution. One-school pathfinders have allowed areas throughout the country, where there are high-need local situations, to produce new facilities quickly. It is better to do so in a broader way that fits with the overall strategy. That is my conclusion. We also need to make sure that the same rigour on design, sustainability and value for money applies to every investment across BSF. Some of the early one-school pathfinders did not score as highly as the schemes that are coming through now.

  Q59  Paul Holmes: I was going to ask about that. Some of the early stories were horror stories about individual schools being taken to the cleaners by the PFI contractor, who might say, "Well, if you want these extra school activities in the evenings and at weekends, you will have to pay extra for them, and we will charge you for car parking and so on." That goes against the whole point of improving and extending school facilities. Are you saying that we have learned the lessons from that by doing whole-authority negotiations?

  Tim Byles: Yes. That is important. There are two or three points to make on that. First, it was not just a function of one-school pathfinders. It was an issue historically with single-school PFI, which caused a range of problems on flexibility and value for money. However, there are some good examples of single-school PFIs which do not have those problems, so it is not just an issue in kind. The Jo Richardson community school in Barking and Dagenham is a good example of a flexible arrangement with a PFI provider. The maintenance and facilities management arrangements are managed by the school to a very high degree of value for money and flexibility through the introduction of vocational space, new special needs provision and so on. It can be done, but it is much more difficult on a single-school basis. That is why looking at the rest of the estate is so important. What is unique about the local education partnership approach—I speak as someone who, in my previous life, was quite critical of the problems of PFI in its early years—is that it is in the business interest of the consortium to both be flexible and deliver value for money. Otherwise, they lose the exclusivity for the period, which is given by the local authority and could be for ten years. The value for money has to increase year on year on a like-for-like basis, or the exclusivity is lost. That is the first time that I have seen PFI working in the explicit interests of the public sector as well as the private sector, and needing to demonstrate that flexibility. Each one of our first several schools coming through the second and third wave of procurement in BSF is hitting its value for money improvements. We monitor that on an individual school basis as well as in phases and waves in BSF. Were those improvements not to be delivered, we would go to an alternative source to provide the schools in a local authority area.



 
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