Building Schools for the Future (Liverpool)
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The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) on his return to the House and on securing the debate. He always showed great commitment to and ambition for children and young people as an Education Minister, and he is a great advocate for Building Schools for the Future. I am happy to add my congratulations to his. I congratulate the schools throughout Liverpool that have made such great advances on their educational achievements and I also congratulate the teachers and students on what they have achieved in recent years.
It is the Government’s ambition to raise the quality of education for every child. As the hon. Gentleman acknowledged, I am a passionate believer in high quality education, and so are the Government. We want to raise the standard of education in every school. Too many children still leave primary school without having achieved the basic standard in reading. We need to sharpen the curriculum, restore confidence in our exam system, ensure that young people go on to work, further or higher education with the skills and qualifications that are valued by colleges, universities and employers, and create a platform for success for the pupil. A first step toward that ambition was the introduction of the Academies Bill, which aims to give more schools the opportunity to enjoy the freedoms that academies have, so decisions about what is taught, how it is taught and how the school is run are placed back in the hands of the professionals.
As has been said, school buildings have a real place in our ambitions for school improvement. As the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) said, it is vital for all schools in Liverpool. As the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) said, building new schools helps to tackle disadvantage and educational under-achievement. As the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) said, new schools can bring in things such as co-location between mainstream and special schools, and as the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) said, every child and teacher deserves to be in a building fit for education and for the 21st century. Finally, the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) emphasised the importance of educational transformation and the need to tackle health inequalities. All those were important points to make in this debate, and I agree with all of them.
Teaching is probably the most important factor bearing on pupils’ outcomes, but it is right to say that the environment must be conducive to and must support education as far as possible. Good buildings, classrooms and equipment are necessary for children to learn, and to make their school a place where they feel happy and secure. Schools will continue to need rebuilding and refurbishing in the future, and, with a rising birth rate, more school places will be needed, which will, of course, require capital spending.
However, we also have to acknowledge, as the Chancellor made clear in his Budget last week, that we are living in a difficult fiscal climate in which £1 of every £4 that we spend is borrowed, and, increasingly, professionals across all public services are being asked to do more with less. That is the reality of the times in which we live, but, despite the deficit that this Government have inherited and the need to make £6 billion of savings this year, we have protected front-line funding for schools, sixth forms and Sure Start, and we remain committed to investing in the schools estate to ensure that pupils are educated in buildings of a good standard where they feel safe, comfortable and ready to learn.
We need to ensure that we are securing for teachers, head teachers and the taxpayer the best possible value for money as we seek to bring expenditure under control. That will mean some tough decisions. BSF was a flagship programme of the previous Government, who aimed to rebuild or refurbish every secondary school in the country by 2023. Where it has delivered, some impressive new buildings have been built, but that has been at great cost.
Rebuilding a school under BSF is three times more expensive than building a commercial building, and twice as expensive as building a school in, say, Ireland. The programme simply has not delivered as it should have. Of 3,500 secondary schools, only 5% have been rebuilt or refurbished, or received BSF funding for information and communications technology. That is just 178 schools—astonishingly few, considering how much has been spent.
The programme never really got off on the right foot. In February 2004, the Department’s goal was to build 200 schools by 2008, but, of those 200, only 42 were completed by the end of that year. Ambitions for the programme started out as unrealistic and then became unfeasible. Last year’s National Audit Office report on BSF said that for the programme to realise the ambition of rebuilding or refurbishing every secondary school,
“250 schools will need to be built a year and the number of schools in procurement and construction at any one time will need to double”
from the next year. That clearly is not sustainable, particularly in the current climate.
The NAO report also documented the tremendous waste that has become synonymous with BSF. The budget bulged from £45 billion to £55 billion, and the time scale increased from 10 years to a projected 18 years. Of the £250 million spent before building began, £60 million was spent on consulting or advisory costs, supporting layer upon layer of process. There are eight official stages to the BSF process, but each one contains its own substrata of complexity. The second stage, strategic planning, has a further nine stages that lead to the completion of a strategy for change. Process upon process, cost upon cost—BSF and its administration and procurement processing have not represented good value for money. We support capital investment, but we need to ensure that procurement minimises administration and consultants’ costs.
Bill Esterson
I want to be clear about what the Minister is saying. I take on board his point about getting procurement right, but is he saying that he will commit to the BSF programme once he is satisfied that the procurement is right?
Mr Gibb
The hon. Gentleman will just have to wait until I finish my comments.
It should also be borne in mind that, in the previous Government’s final Budget, it was clear that if Labour won the general election, they would cut capital spending across Departments by more than 50% over the following three years. Some of those cuts inevitably would have fallen on schools. Indeed, the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls), who is now the shadow Secretary of State for Education, admitted in the House that school capital spending was not protected under Labour’s plans.
As the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby said, Liverpool was one of the first local authorities to enter the BSF programme: it has one school open and another 34 in the programme. We are acutely aware that a great number of parents, pupils and school staff are affected by decisions about school building projects, and we have no wish to keep anyone—not even the hon. Gentleman—waiting longer than is absolutely necessary. The wave 2 projects in his constituency are already under construction. As such, it is unlikely that any changes in the BSF programme would impact on projects that are so far advanced.
I hope that that will go some way to reassure the hon. Gentleman about the projects in his constituency, but we cannot yet confirm the future of individual projects. I am afraid that I cannot offer him or any other hon. Member present today any further reassurance, but I would be happy to keep in touch with all those who have taken part in the debate.
Maria Eagle
I am grateful to the Minister. We heard from the Leader of the House last week that there might be a statement this week about BSF—he said so clearly. Are we still to get that statement this week, or has it slipped back until next week?
Stephen Twigg
I mentioned this in my speech—I realise that the Minister has a short period in which to respond. Would the Secretary of State be willing to meet a small delegation from Liverpool that would include the leader of the council, Councillor Joe Anderson, and the cabinet member for education, Councillor Jane Corbett?
Mr Gibb
I can certainly offer the hon. Gentleman a meeting with Lord Hill. I dare not speak on behalf of the Secretary of State, but I know that my noble Friend Lord Hill would be happy to meet him and a delegation from Liverpool to discuss the details of BSF in Liverpool. All hon. Members present would be welcome at that meeting.
We are committed to raising standards in all schools, right across the education sector. In doing so, we will focus on raising outcomes for all pupils, on reducing bureaucracy and on restoring our education system to being one of the best in the world. Capital investment remains important to our programme of school reform, but it must be efficient and cost-effective, and it must reflect the best possible value for money so that children benefit from the best possible standard of education and teaching.
Question put and agreed to.