“The Government is investing £21.9 billion of capital into the school estate between 2008 and 2011 as part of the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) 2007.

In March 2009, the government also announced that it was accelerating almost £1billion of investment to enable thousands of school projects to be started in the next 12 months, which means that overall schools capital spending in 2009-10 will now be almost £8 billion – up from under £700m a year in 1997.”

Going forward, the £45bn Building Schools for the Future (BSF) Programme, which is scheduled to run until 2020 will be of particular interest to new entrants because Partnerships for Schools, the body responsible for delivering the programme, has just released a tender notice for a new £4bn framework that will give up to 12 contractors a chance to win academies work under the scheme. The National Framework for Academies could be another major source of new work in the schools sector. Currently more than half of new academy build projects are being procured through frameworks, with the remainder being delivered through Local Education Partnerships.

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