黑洞社区

The government鈥檚 拢2.4bn Priority Schools 黑洞社区 Programme could be accelerated from its current schedule if early schemes progress well, officials have revealed.

Mike Green, director of capital at the Education Funding Agency, said the delivery body will review the programme once procurement is under way on the first privately financed schemes to see if the initiative - currently due to run until 2015 - could be sped up. 鈥淲e will revisit the situation in six months to a year to see if we could accelerate,鈥� he said.

Mike Coleman, the EFA鈥檚 director for programme delivery, said: 鈥淲e are confident with the time period, and obviously we are under pressure from ministers to accelerate. We feel we could do that.鈥�

The EFA is to release the first group of schools in the 拢1.75bn privately-financed element of its Priority Schools 黑洞社区 Programme (PSBP) this spring, nearly a year later than originally expected, as 黑洞社区 first revealed last August. The delay is largely a result of the government鈥檚 work to reform PFI.

Green and Coleman were speaking at a conference in London last week. At the event, Coleman said he would try to set out the timetable for at least the first three privately financed batches when the first group is procured.

Coleman said batches would be grouped geographically, as directly funded schools are, and would usually contain a combination of primary and secondary schools. Coleman said where a batch was made up of predominately primary schools, which are of lower value to contractors than secondary, the EFA would 鈥渢ry to scale it to make it more commercially attractive.鈥�

Speaking at the same event, Steve Beechey, the education director of Wates, which has been shortlisted for the 鈥淢idlands 1鈥� batch of directly funded schools, said that he felt the procurement process for the batch had been 鈥渧ery quick and smooth鈥� so far.