To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families what criteria Partnerships for Schools use to assess the readiness of local authorities to join the reformed Building Schools for the Future programme. (286808)

A Readiness to Deliver assessment covers: educational transformation; project deliverability; investment strategy; affordability and value for money; local resources and capability; and benefits realisation. In essence, local authorities have to prove that they are ready to deliver a clear education vision and estate strategy that will show how the investment through Building Schools for the Future will help improve education for every young person and deliver best value to the public purse.

To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families with reference to paragraph 6.21, page 121, of Budget 2009, what his most recent assessment is of progress made by the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme in changing its procurement model so as to enable BSF projects with Partnership for Schools to join the programme on a gradual basis. (286892)

In March this year, we announced the revised national programme for Building Schools for the Future (BSF), in line with the proposals of our consultation last year, based on the revised expressions of interest which authorities had proposed, including initial projects from authorities which have not yet started in BSF, and prioritised on the educational and social need of schools in the projects. Partnerships for Schools (PfS) then had meetings with prioritised authorities to discuss their readiness to deliver. A total of 23 authorities provided evidence of their readiness to deliver, and PfS is evaluating this evidence with a view to recommending to me the first projects which are fully ready to start in BSF. We aim shortly to give further details.

To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families with reference to paragraph 14, page 8 of the National Audit Office report on Financial management in the Department for Children, Schools and Families, HC 267, Session 2008-09, for what reasons the Building Schools for the Future programme has an under spend of £2.4 billion. (286898)

There are three key reasons for the delays in some of the early local authority Building Schools for the Future (BSF) projects which caused an underspend:

the original expectations of project completion dates were over-optimistic, given the scale of the programme and the aspiration of achieving a step-change in educational outcomes from the capital investment;

many local authorities in the early waves of BSF found identifying and resourcing the necessary project management skill sets to deliver the programme more challenging than expected;

many of the local authorities selected for the early waves of BSF also had the biggest challenges to manage, were pioneering the processes, and were at the forefront of resolving unexpected difficulties with innovative solutions.

Current plans indicate that all funds made available to the BSF programme since 2005 will have been allocated to projects by March 2011.