Speech by the Prime Minister on'Building Schools for the Future'

Every secondary school in England and Wales will be upgraded as part of a £5 billion programme announced by the Prime Minister today.

Read the speech in full below

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It is a privilege to be opening Capital City Academy and to be speaking about the reform of secondary education as we publish the prospectus for the transformational 'Building Schools for the Future' programme.

Let me start by paying tribute to Sir Frank Lowe whose exemplary vision and commitment - to education and to sport - have created the academy we see today. This is a truly inspirational academy project, uniting excellence in sport and education with a strong community focus. It is still early days and work in progress. But already, in its first months, Capital Academy has recruited 15 national standard athletes who chose it for their studies, and the academy is over-subscribed.

Also warm congratulations to Frank Thomas and his staff, to Brent council, to the Department for Education and Skills, to Paul Boateng, who has been supportive throughout as the local MP, and to all those other partners who have brought this project to fruition.

And a special mention for Sir Norman Foster and his team on their magnificent design. I was told by someone who had been here that 'it looks more like a university than a school' - and so it does. But why shouldn't a secondary school be built on the scale and grandeur of a university? Students should feel a real sense of pride and worth in their schools and it is right that they exemplify the best in British design.

Of course, what goes on in a school is far more important than the buildings themselves. But the one contributes to the other, and today we are celebrating a stunning new generation in school design. Not just new classrooms. But state-of-the-art ICT, whiteboards, sports facilities, community facilities, public space, facilities for out-of-hours activities. All built around the needs of students, teachers, and the wider community. All geared to develop the talents of each individual young person to the fullest extent.

I am a fairly frequent school visitor. As I meet young people, including those here today, I am constantly impressed by the scale of their ambition and potential - and how things have changed from a generation ago, when so many saw secondary school as an irrelevant dead-end, counting the days to get out. Most young people today, whatever their background, see school as a passport to a good career. They are enthusiastic not just about their studies, but about the whole range of activities which schools now seek to provide. They realise that the world of work has changed radically; that everyone needs skills and good qualifications to succeed.

The professionalism of teachers is rising to this challenge of developing individual talent to the full - within a far more personalised education system. They rightly look to us in government to provide the necessary facilities and support for the job.

This is a school of the future. Through the 'Building Schools for the Future' programme, with the remarkable exemplar designs we have just seen, we intend to build such schools nationwide. Every school up to a good standard, and very many of the exemplary quality we see today. This is what the BSF programme will achieve over the next ten to fifteen years, starting with the 19 local authorities announced in the first wave today.

This is a decisive break with the past. Seven years ago, when we took office, the school capital budget was less than £700m a year - not even enough to do the essential patch and mend on existing schools. There were still schools with outside toilets, many in a shocking state. Today, the schools capital programme stands at nearly £4bn a year; and in the financial year after next, 2005-06, as we have set out in the last Comprehensive Spending Review, it will rise above £5bn - seven times the level we inherited. More than £2bn of this will go on BSF, which still ensures a capital programme for other priorities - including primary schools - substantially larger than in the past.

It is this big increase in investment in schools which has made Capital City Academy possible; and which, with BSF, will over time see the entire secondary school building stock upgraded and refurbished in the greatest school renewal programme in British history.

Nothing gives me greater pride as Prime Minister than this investment in the future - an investment in each individual young person and their future. In communities like this in Willesden, where I'm told many people can scarcely believe what has happened to their local school, it is the strongest possible statement we could make about the opportunity society we are creating for the future.

The process of renewal we see in the buildings today is extending across the education system:

• In the quality and performance of our teaching force - applications for graduate teacher training 70 per cent up in the last five years; their quality, according to Ofsted, the highest ever.
• In the standards being attained by our students - again, the highest ever, measured by test, GCSE and A-level results.
• And in staying-on beyond 16, with the number going on to further and higher education, and to skilled jobs with modern apprenticeships, rising steadily year by year.

The challenge for us is to link investment to reform - not just more money, but a fundamentally better education system - accelerating the improvement in standards and opportunities and give all our young people the chance to succeed. This is a key aspect of Building Schools for the Future: investment and reform integrally linked in a wholly new approach to capital investment.

The prospectus for BSF, published today, sets out how the government intends to take this forward. Local authorities will put forward plans to match investment with reform. We want to take this once in a lifetime opportunity not simply to upgrade existing schools, but to improve radically the pattern and quality of provision across the entire secondary education estate. So we are seeking a thoroughgoing review of:

• the size, character and number of schools locality by locality;
• the expansion of successful schools;
• the pattern of specialisms within and between schools, building on the highly successful specialist school programme, and the facilities needed to support them;
• the pattern of post-16 provision;
• the pattern of community facilities linked to schools, including childcare;
• the application of new technology to learning;
• and the provision of new schools, including new schools to replace existing weak and failing schools where this is appropriate.

For schools - their heads, governors and parents - this is an unprecedented opportunity to consider their future. It is also an opportunity for local government tochampionthe interests of parents,promotingthe best possible educational provision in each locality. We look forward to a new partnership for change with local government, building on the 'compacts' for change agreed between local education authorities and the Department for Education and Skills.

Academies are a prime example of the innovation we seek, and the linkage of investment to reform. They are entirely new schools, with a specialist centre of excellence and an all-ability intake. They have a wholly new, independent governance structure which comes from the relationship with an external sponsor who brings not only a financial endowment but also vision, commitment, and a record of success from outside the state school system. The result: academies with strong vision and leadership, state-of-the-art facilities, high standards, maximum capacity to innovate - and entirely free to the pupil and parent, like any other school in the state system.

Let me say a word more about the sponsors who are founding these academies. Individuals like Frank Lowe are true social entrepreneurs, and I am glad to see many others coming forward, bringing a huge commitment and excitement to the task. In addition there are charitable trusts, the churches and other faith promoters, and we are encouraging them too. We are also beginning to secure two new types of academy sponsor who have a vital part to play - corporate sponsors, who take on the management of an academy as a part of their collective corporate endeavour; and existing private schools, who see the launch of an academy, which they run, as a path-breaking way of extending their contribution into the state sector, in a partnership with their existing school or schools.

These new forms of academy sponsorship are of immense value, and I want to encourage them strongly. They break down old barriers which have bedevilled education for too long. And they inject new energy, commitment, and entrepreneurial zeal in support of our state schools.

That is why the prospectus published today invites every local authority to consider the scope for academies in their area. Why it encourages them to engage directly with potential sponsors. And why it stipulates that funding approval will be dependent upon local authorities matching the scale of the challenge they face with the scale of the reform which they propose, including the creation of academies. This is a central aspect of the new prospectus. It enables academies to be funded directly from the Building Schools for the Future programme, and we expect it to result in many more academies than the 53 currently planned.

Academies are radical public service reform in action. A wholly new type of school run on independent lines, but forging strong partnerships throughout its community - targeted on areas where, for whatever reason, traditional school management has not succeeded as we would have wished. Where the challenge is greatest, reform must be boldest - and academies embody that principle.

Academies are of course part of a much wider canvas of education reform. Many of the features I have described are spreading rapidly across the secondary school system. Diversity is now widely accepted. A majority of secondary schools now enjoy specialist status. They are building centres of excellence in different curriculum areas, and engaging with external sponsors and employers in wholly new ways. The success of specialist status in improving results is now well attested; most schools aspire to specialist status - a remarkable advance on the position even two years ago - and we are considering how to extend the specialist concept further.

The quality of leadership is improving steadily across the system, linked to the new National College for School Leadership and its programmes. So too the quality of teacher education and training, both for new and in-service teachers. The school workforce is being reformed, with a greater role for assistants and support staff. Schools are taking far more responsibility for their own improvement and management, and focusing on the progress of individual pupils to a much greater degree. New vocational qualifications, and incentives to stay on beyond 16 including Educational Maintenance Allowances, are transforming expectations and aspirations among those who used to leave school with virtually nothing. The needs of gifted and talented are being recognised much better, and a debate on further curriculum reform is taking place.

When a few years ago I talked about a 'post-comprehensive' system, this was regarded as controversial. It is now an emerging reality. A quiet revolution is sweeping across our secondary education system, and we want it to intensify. We maintain the basic principle of equality of opportunity but we allow it to flourish in a secondary system more diverse, more open, more personal to each child and parent than ever before.

This is part, too, of a much wider agenda of public service reform. We never said we could transform the public services in a few years. It takes time to reverse decades of neglect and under-investment. Not just to make good the funding problems, but to raise capacity and confidence, to recruit the professional staff needed, to reinvigorate the ethos of public service, and to develop the personalised services - requiring fundamental reform and far greater diversity - which citizens expect in the modern day.

Personalised provision, tailored to the needs of each individual citizen, is our objective across the public services. It is exemplified by the mission of this academy and the Building Schools for the Future programme. And it is a process of change and renewal which we seek to extend nationwide in the years ahead.