By Tim Byles, chief executive of Partnerships for Schools

For me, the words which best describe the past year for Partnerships for Schools and the state of the Building Schools for the Future programme are dynamic and maturing. BSF is operating with increasing pace in a vibrant environment.

BSF is often tagged with the epithet ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ project, and it certainly true. But it is about much more than simply rebuilding or refurbishing schools, it gives local authorities a unique opportunity to completely transform where, how and for whom education is delivered in their area – an exciting and sometimes daunting prospect.

By the start of May this year, 13 BSF schools had opened across England – from Newcastle in the north to Bristol in the south – and we are beginning to see the green shoots of success with schools reporting improved attendance, better behaviour and increased community use of facilities. Buildings and resources which were once only used during the school day and now being enjoyed by local residents year-round, making schools vibrant and welcoming centres in their communities.

By mid-June a total of 20 schemes had signed deals with private sector partners, worth in excess of £2.5 billion, and 12 Local Education Partnerships – the innovative public private partnership model created to deliver BSF – have been formed. All in all more than 70 local authorities are engaged in rebuilding and renewing secondary schools in their area, and from my travels around England, I have seen first hand how BSF teams are making real progress with their plans to transform education.

The delivery of Academies continues to quicken. There are currently 355 Academy projects identified and of those Academies PfS will deliver 134 through the BSF LEP process, with 131 being delivered through the National Framework. Milton Keynes and Sunderland both reached Contract Award in March, a particularly important
milestone given they are both using the National Framework, which was only launched just over a year ago.

Working in an increasingly mature market and with increasingly experienced stakeholders, who have learned, and applied, lessons from earlier engagement in the BSF process is starting to have real benefits for the timeliness, efficiency and cost-effectives of the programme as a whole.

The last year has seen acceleration across all phases of the BSF programme: from a number of measures which have helped reduce the pre-procurement timetable by as much as six months, to plans to keep the momentum in the programme by giving authorities in Waves 7-9 the chance to bring forward entry and start on their Building Schools for the Future journey this summer.

Just this month [May], Ministers gave the green light for a new-look procurement process to be introduced for authorities in Wave 5 and beyond, significantly reducing bidder costs and enabling local authorities to deliver their schools sooner than previously possible.

The BSF Procurement Review, the outcome of a major consultation exercise which has been broadly welcomed by stakeholders, promises savings of up to £250 million across the national programme and could reduce procurement time by up to two months.

Overall the new process will maintain and improve competition across the programme and increase the certainty that individual projects will help deliver educational transformation. For me, this is the most important outcome of all, that young people, teachers and their communities will benefit from their new learning environments earlier than was previously possible.

The wide-ranging and constructive discussions we have had with more than 120 individuals over the course of the review illustrate, I believe, the massive enthusiasm and support for this unprecedented programme. It has given us a valuable opportunity to reflect on experiences to date and, importantly, to use the views and expertise of those engaged in BSF nationwide as a springboard for these new proposals.

We are looking forward to another dynamic year for the BSF programme: over a dozen BSF schools are due to open their doors to students this September; an interim wave of BSF, with local authorities drawn from Waves 7 to 9, is due to start their BSF journey this summer; and the DCSF have now issued their consultation looking at the order in which those local authorities not yet in the programme will start their BSF projects.

At the outset of BSF, the two key criteria determining the order in which local authorities joined the programme were, quite rightly, academic attainment and social deprivation. As a result, the areas of greatest need are now being tackled, and having reached this mid point of the programme, with around half of local authorities already engaged in BSF, it is right to consider whether there are additional criteria that should betaken account of in determining when the remaining authorities should join the programme. The consultation is a welcome step to addressing this and could allow local authorities to join BSF when they can demonstrate they are ready to do so rather than in “waves” made up of a number of authorities at a time.

Having refined the pre-procurement and procurement phases of BSF, we will shortly be turning our attention to Local Education Partnerships to review the effectiveness of their operation long-term.

But whatever we do over the next year will be informed by the valuable knowledge and lessons the BSF community has learned to date. An essential part of our role at PfS is to encourage discussion and disseminates lessons learned so that projects in later phases of BSF can learn from the experience of others, and build on these solid foundations. I am absolutely clear that we will continue to learn and refine our processes throughout the programme, and that is one reason why we have recently launched a new-look PfS website (www.partnershipsforschools.org.uk). It is one-stop shop for anyone looking for information about BSF, from when their local authority will join, to documentation about our processes, and to see pictures and videos from some of our BSF schools and projects.

And as BSF is about local solutions, not a one-size-fits-all approach, we are developing over the next few months an online collaborative area for those involved in BSF to share thoughts and solutions. The next phase of development will offer enhanced networking opportunities. Ultimately I hope that our collaborative working areas will become a kind of Facebook for BSF, with stimulating and relevant online discussions.

The last year has included many special moments, from hearing about how exclusion rates have plummeted at the Bristol Brunel Academy (the first BSF school to be delivered via a Local Education Partnership) because students feel safe and inspired there, or the sheer joy on the faces of students at The Michael Tippett School who are settling into their new school with its bespoke facilities for students with Special Educational Needs. I look forward to many more of these moments in the coming year.