Schools: Funding Reform

Lord Boswell of Aynho Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

Like my noble friend, I sat through the previous debate on design, and I thought someone would ask me about it. I was expecting the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, to be in her place, but my noble friend has asked the question instead. Coming to listen to another Bill going through its Committee stage and being subjected to some of the same kind of scrutiny to which I have been subjected in the Moses Room makes a nice change.

On design, the Government want to get a balance between delivering savings through a common sense approach and not reinventing the wheel every time. I agree about not having a one-size-fits-all design that can be rolled out across the country. There clearly needs to be proper discretion about the set of standardised designs—plural—that we would work up. In that context, building schools and other buildings that are energy efficient is extremely and increasingly important.

I agree with my noble friend about the importance of local discretion in thinking about revenue. She put the point about simplicity, equity and complexity very well. It is precisely those issues that we will need to tease out in the consultation to try to get to a point where there is more transparency and openness but there is still room for people to make sensible judgments on the ground. As she also said, we want to iron out some of these inequalities across the country. The points she raised about academies and academy funding are the sorts of issues that we will be discussing with local authorities and their representative bodies to try to resolve this issue.

Special schools, like all schools, will be able to apply for funding to help with their condition because we know from the work we have done that, just as with other schools, there are special schools in great need of help with dilapidation, so they will be able to apply to the same fund.

[Lord Boswell of Aynho]

My Lords, I, too, welcome the Statement. Can my noble friend help me with a couple of details on the capital side? First, possibly in parallel with, rather than in sequence with, the study that he is to undertake into the state of school conditions, will he be giving some thought to building up a matrix that will aid him in deciding which schools have the greatest need for capital work so there is a principled basis for doing it?

My second point is something of an extension of the point made by my noble friend Lady Walmsley. It is in relation to the cost of building projects. Will he make sure that the costing takes into account the whole-of-life cost so that the building projects are sustainable, rather than simply the cheapest at the time?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, the point of carrying out the condition survey is precisely to arrive at the point, to which my noble friend referred, where one can make a fair comparison between schools across the country to work out which of them have the greatest need and are most in need of having their condition improved. He is obviously right about that.

So far as the cost of the building projects is concerned, my noble friend makes a good point. One of the things that we will be looking at is how to try to secure the best possible value in a number of different ways, perhaps by grouping schools.