School quango bullying local authorities
Author: The Observer - Jul 12, 2009
The quango running the government's £55bn programme to rebuild schools has been accused of "bullying" local authorities with threats to withdraw their funding in a damning new report released ahead of an official announcement on the scheme this week.
In the report Partnership for Schools (PfS), the non-departmental public body set up to oversee the biggest school rebuilding programme in 100 years is accused of "power-grabbing" and pressurising local authorities into accepting new schools and costly new ICT systems.
The report entitled Building Blocks: an Investigation into Building Schools for the Future, by the thinktank Policy Exchange, includes evidence from local authorities which claimed PfS had strong-armed them to accept the government's flagship academies programme or risk losing funding through the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme.
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