School rebuilding 'going ahead'

The first BSF school - Bristol Brunel Academy - opened in September

The government has denied claims that its £45bn school rebuilding programme in England has been halted.

Instead it is reviewing the way local authorities are prioritised for the scheme in future, the Department for Children Schools and Families said.

Shadow Schools Secretary Michael Gove had suggested that Gordon Brown had quietly dropped his pledge to renew all of England's secondary schools.

A government spokesman described the claim as "absolute rubbish".

The first three waves of local authorities running projects in the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) scheme were picked solely on the basis of the scale of deprivation and the number of pupils on free school meals.

'Readiness test'

However, projects in many of these areas are yet to get off the ground.

The second batch, those in waves three to six, were also considered to be needy, but to avoid the delays that have hit earlier projects they had to pass a "readiness test".

Tim Byles, chief executive of Partnership for Schools - the organisation the government set up to help councils with the Building Schools for the Future programme - said the next nine waves would go ahead.

"BSF is not being halted, as has been mis-reported.

"A forthcoming consultation with local authorities will consider the best order in which the remaining local authorities will enter the programme.

"Every single local authority will be rebuilding and renewing their secondary schools by 2015, making a real and tangible difference to students, teachers and the wider local communities across the country."

The first brand new BSF school opened this month, and a further 11 BSF schools are anticipated by the spring DCSF spokesman

A consultation to be launched before Christmas will look at the best way to prioritise future projects within the 76 remaining local authorities.

Decisions

A DCSF spokesman said ministers had always planned to review the system for allocating funds - once the project had reached this stage.

He said: "The first brand new BSF school opened this month, and a further 11 BSF schools are anticipated by the spring.

"The programme is now accelerating and by 2011, we expect around 200 rebuilt secondary schools to open every year thereafter.

"In 2004 we announced that Building Schools for the Future would be delivered in 15 waves, subject to future public spending decisions.

"Plans for waves one to six are both ambitious and deliverable and we have addressed the key issues which caused delays in the early waves."

However, eight local authorities in the first wave are still to sign contracts with their private sector partners.

These are Greenwich, Knowsley, Leicester, Lewisham, Newham, Stoke, Sunderland and South Tyneside and Gateshead.

It is not the first time the government has had its school rebuilding pledge queried.

In 2004 the Liberal Democrats revealed that Gordon Brown's pledge in his Budget speech that all schools would be rebuilt or refurbished by 2015 had been changed.

Ministers were by this time only promising that work would be complete on one school in each local authority area.

Now they are saying work will simply be underway by 2015.