Building Schools for the Future

It has to be said that under the Tories there was little or no investment in the infrastructure of schools. Many schools were left to cope with inadequate school buildings which had a detrimental impact on teaching.

It was a national disgrace that school buildings were left to crumble whilst public services were sold off like BT, British Gas and the water companies, with millions of pounds being made by the market. Cuts in school funding meant that schools had no spare cash to even address redecoration or simple repairs.

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Labour has managed … to marketise and privatise our education at a faster rate than the Tories

n fact, the only way to get any money to build new schools was by radically reducing school places through the ‘surplus places’ regime which often meant in reality closing schools. In Coventry, we went through a number of campaigns during the 80’s and 90’s to oppose the closure of local schools. Some campaigns were successful, others were not, and we lost a number of local schools.

When Labour came to power in 1997 their mantra of ‘Education, Education, Education’ rang out across the Local Authorities up and down the country. Labour seemed to promise that money would be found to rebuild and refurbish our crumbling schools. Sure enough, billions of pounds were pledged by Gordon Brown in his budgets - often announcing the same cash more than once!

This funding should have begun to address the state of school buildings and to provide an infrastructure that would meet the challenges of delivering an education system in the 21^st century. Unfortunately, there were serious catches to this programme and things were not as simple as they should have been. The funding came in the form of PFI, the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme and the City Academies. What Labour has managed to do with these three strategies is to marketise and privatise our education at a faster rate than the Tories ever managed to achieve. More important though is that they have attacked the very core of our Comprehensive system of education.

Up and down the country, campaigns often led by NUT Associations have fought against PFI deals, City Academies and other attacks on our education system. Whilst there have been some successes where local parents teachers and communities have come out in force to protect their schools, we have also seen communities bought off with the promise of shiny new buildings crammed with computers and state of the art technologies. Not surprising really when you look at the decrepit school buildings that many have to contend with.

What has happened in Coventry is no different to what is happening up and down the country with local authorities being undermined and Councils - whether they be Labour, Tory or Lib Dem - caving in to the big bully pressure of the government. How many times have you heard from our locally elected representatives ‘This is the only game in town’?

When Coventry first applied for the funding to rebuild their secondary schools under BSF they were turned down because they were told that results were too good and we had too many special schools! It was clear from the offset that BSF was going to be used by government to lever local authorities into carrying out exactly what the DfES dictated - complete and utter blackmail!

The LA consulted on its special schools and came up with a plan to amalgamate some special schools to reduce the number. When they applied again they were rejected because Coventry did not have any Academies. The LA identified a school to sacrifice on the altar of Lord Adonis’ City Academies programme only to find that Bob Edmiston, a Vardy ‘clone’, had identified another school in the city as an Academy so we could potentially end up with two !

Now that Coventry has been accepted on Wave 4 of the BSF plan it has become apparent that there are even more obstacles put in the way. For a start, all of the re-builds will be through a massive PFI scheme. One of the big questions is how much will the ‘affordability gap’ be and how will this be funded. This is the difference between the budget that has been identified and the real cost of the PFI. It is estimated that this could be as much as £3 million every year for the lifetime of the PFI scheme which will be 25 years or more- that’s £75 million in total!

If we look at PFI schemes in the Health Service this can amount to huge amounts of money which has to be found and the only way of finding this money is to cut services. To our cost in Coventry, some of those cuts are impacting on schools with cuts to speech therapists, school nurses and other health practitioners who support pupils. Already, Heads are becoming extremely concerned about how their school budgets will be affected and where this money will come from.

The fact that the BSF programme is not managed by an elected accountable body but by a Local Education Partnership (LEP), where 80% of this will be made up of private companies looking to make profits out of education in our city, sets the scene for even further privatisation of services.

Schools are beginning to see that BSF will not only have financial implications but will also dictate teaching and learning. This is especially true for the delivery of the 14-19 agenda as well as further remodelling of the workforce, heavy reliance on ICT and extended hours which will all have a direct impact on the conditions of our members. ICT companies such as Microsoft must be rubbing their hands with glee.

What has become clear from Council Officers who have been in discussions with the DfES about Coventry’s bid for BSF is that they desperately want to see even more diversity amongst schools which means they want Coventry schools to take up Trust status as well.

Another factor that has become evident is the debate about how many school places these new schools should cater for. The government clearly does not want any spare capacity at all in the system so no chance of reducing class sizes. If the government was really sincere about providing a first class public education system to rival the Independent sector then this rebuilding programme should have provided an opportunity to reduce class size.

Finally, what about the type of schools that will be built. Will they meet the challenge of reducing their carbon emissions? With millions of pounds already spent on BSF schemes up and running, a report by the British Council for School Environments suggest that the criteria set for new school buildings, called the BREEAM tests, are insufficient. The report warns that new buildings could be unfit for purpose! They call on the government to look again at the criteria and make them tighter. One of their demands calls for ‘greater participation by teachers and pupils whose needs must be paramount’ !

As teachers, we demand good quality school buildings for our pupils and for ourselves but not at any cost. Certainly not at the cost of more privatisation, marketisation and increased selection. It is obscene that the government has just voted through £75 billion to replace Trident and continues to waste billions on the war in Iraq. That money should be ploughed into education and health services!