“With forecast cuts in public spending it is likely that the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme will need to consider more refurbishment and less new builds.”
With this quote, Roger Hawkins begins to argue the case for positive refurbishment of existing structures for schools in the Architects’ Journal.
Some buildings are obviously better pulled down, but many can be modernised effectively and gradually, and using funds that are realistically available. Ambitious plans can be made, but if funds disappear, they can be modified or cancelled.
These options aren’t available if school system change occurs. Pupils have to be housed somewhere; they need classrooms.
Nobody knows if funding will still be there after a change of government. Nobody knows where the lower-primary funding is coming from at all.
So why are we planning a revolution rather than an evolution?
Save Middle Schools - The Blog 
WHAT IF?
What if the previous Chief Exec of Bedford Borough had not spent 18 months arguing that he could do BSF better than the established procedure?
What if another 12 months had not been lost due to the mad proposal of changing our under-funded but rapidly improving 3-tier system to 2-tier being raised by the “education elite”?
Just maybe we would have got all or most of that BSF money for our Upper and Middle Schools that is now disappearing.
Still the 2-tier protagonist keep avoiding what has become inevitable. I still cannot believe that the Lib-Dem and Labour Mayoral candidates still want the disaster of forced change to 2-tier schools for Bedford Borough.
You still do not understand. It is the elite and their apparatchiks who plan the revolution and afterwards they make all of the decisions. They have their “useful fools” in place; they will follow the dictates of the elite. How can you naively still believe that the people will have any influence in the matter when even two of the main candidates for your Mayor are so committed to the revolutionary path?
JamesD you are talking total sense my friend – as far as i can see this has all been about the pride of the individuals involved and not the CHILDREN… Shame
The question I have is whether those responsible for taking forward the BSF bid are fit and able to do so now that the tide has turned and the plan is no longer credible. At the very least the chief exec should have ordered a new bid to be prepared for enhancing the existing system in which all the current schools should be involved. I note that the BBC is running a story on the IMF report this morning with UK projected to run the biggest deficit in the G20 in 2010, 13.3% of GDP. The next goverment needs a credible plan so does the borough