Home | Learning | Building Schools for the Future | News | 24 September: Interview with Mike Fowler

24 September: Interview with Mike Fowler

BSF claims that it will transform learning – how can it deliver such a wide remit?

BSF is already delivering a transformation for young people up and down the country who say they feel more safe, suffer less bullying, feel really proud of their school, enjoy school more and intend to stay on to the sixth form.

In the city we want consistently good schools and pupils gaining the necessary social skills, confidence and qualifications to progress to employment, education or training of their choice.

All schools and local colleges in the city are committed to working together to achieve this. BSF will provide the necessary facilities to deliver these wonderful aspirations.

Why has BSF received some adverse national publicity?

Everybody I have spoken to fully supports the intent of BSF to massively improve the opportunities, outcomes and facilities for our young people.

Where BSF has been criticised nationally it has mostly been down to the implementation process being too slow, inadequate consultation, insufficient focus on design and lost opportunities.

As a Wave 6 authority Portsmouth has already established an excellent reputation for learning from these past mistakes.  A recent external review of the city’s BSF preparation concluded the “LA has a deep understanding of large scale project management” and which “is reflected in the confidence and pride the Project Team shows in its work.

You’ve put together a wide team – what are its strengths?

The wide team (which includes school staff, pupils, parents, members, officers, local colleges, University, Sports Council, Dioceses etc) have all demonstrated an outstanding collective enthusiasm, commitment, drive, passion and urgency to use BSF to maximise and transform learning opportunities for the city.

What has been really rewarding is that this collaboration and energy is already producing substantial early improvements eg five school soft federation with Portsmouth College who are already working together to improve English and mathematic standards.  A key message is that we don’t always have to wait for new facilities to deliver education transformation.

How is it going so far?

Our external assessors tell us we are doing very well indeed.  They say we have embedded education transformation in all that we do, we are doing the right things/tackling the tough issues early in the life of the BSF programme, schools feel well informed and are supportive of our vision and its implementation.

Clearly, we are still early in the BSF process but everyone involved is really proud of what we achieved to date and determined to maintain the momentum, success and sense and fun!