Success on £370m schools bid to be revealed

The successful bidder for a Black Country council's £370 million programme to improve secondary schools will be announced on Friday.

Private sector firms, Environments for Learning and Transform Schools, have both been competing for the Sandwell Council contract and submitted their plans for the Building School's for the Future programme's two sample sites.

The selected bidder will form a local education partnership, joining forces with the council and the Government in the guise of BSF Investments Ltd, and begin the building work later this year. The scheme will ultimately involve rebuilding or revamping all 19 secondary school in Sandwell.

Sandwell's education chief Councillor Ian Jones said the work is expected to start in July at the sample sites at Rowley Regis Learning Campus and Smethwick Learning Campus. The rest of Sandwell's schools will follow in a programme stretching to 2013.

Councillor Jones, said: "We are looking forward to naming the selected bidder out of the two consortia, either of which will be the ideal partner to work with us in delivering our vision for state of the art schools.

"This is an important step forward for everyone with an interest in education in Sandwell, both now and in generations to come. BSF will transform the way we educate our young people, whilst at the same time becoming a focal point for the community as a whole." Melanie Dudley, director of Transformation who is sponsoring the BSF project, said: "Both of the consortia left in the running have presented very strong bids, and it will be a difficult choice between the two.

"We are confident that whoever is chosen will provide well-designed buildings, at the very heart of the community, that will stand the test of time and can be adapted to the changes in teaching and curriculum that will come along over the next 30 years."