Building Schools for the Future

Debate between Craig Whittaker and Derek Twigg

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Westminster Hall

[Derek Twigg]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I shall return to it at the end of my speech in some of the questions that I put to the Minister. He should not take my word on the situation, but should consider the findings of the 2010 school environment survey, conducted by the British Council for School Environments and the Teacher Support Network, in conjunction with the Association of Teachers and Lecturers. The report shows that 95.8% of teachers believe that the school built environment influences pupil behaviour, and over half felt that their surroundings had a negative effect. Investment in school buildings has had a more positive impact on teachers and learners, and such work must continue. That is evidenced by the fact that three quarters of teachers now regard their school as effective and adequate at providing an effective learning environment. That compares with two thirds of teachers in 2007.

Dr Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, asserts:

“Teachers work incredibly hard to give their pupils a good education regardless of the physical environment, but it is much harder for children to concentrate if the classroom is too hot or cold or they can’t hear properly. We can’t stress enough that for teachers and children to teach and learn in an effective manner, school buildings need to be safe, clean, and inspiring.”

I also draw the Minister’s attention to last year’s report by the Government’s favourite auditor, KPMG, on the effects of the private finance initiative, which is central to many BSF projects, on education standards. It concluded that student attainment is 44% higher in PFI schools than in conventional schools, and it built on an American report from 2002 entitled, “Do school facilities affect academic outcomes?” That report found that

“spatial configurations, noise, heat, cold, light and air quality obviously bear on students’ and teachers’ ability to perform. This can be achieved within the limits of existing knowledge, technology and materials; it just requires adequate funding, competent design, construction and maintenance.”

In his article in The Guardian on 8 July, John Crace said that Michael Gove underestimates the impact of surroundings on school pupils.

[Craig Whittaker (Calder Valley) (Con)]

I hear what the hon. Gentleman says about buildings and their impact on teaching and children. I also heard him talk of dilapidated and crumbling schools. I wonder what he would say to the parents and teachers at two schools in my constituency: Todmorden and Calder high schools’ buildings are falling down and are among the five worst in the country. The local authority has spent more than £3.5 million in the last two years alone to keep them open. However, the previous Government’s BSF programme did not apply to those schools because they attain too highly and are not considered to have deprivation. What would the hon. Gentleman say to my constituents?

[Derek Twigg]

I do not know about schools attaining too highly, but I shall mention later a couple of schools in my constituency in that regard. The fact remains that, during all the years in the 1980s and 1990s when the Conservative party was in government, schools fell into a state of ever more disrepair, because there was little money for repairs. When Labour was in government, at least £24 million was spent in my constituency on improving the state of school buildings.

In his statement to the House on 5 July, the Secretary of State referred to a BSF school from which pupils had been sent home because of bad ventilation, leading to the use of additional mobile air conditioners in the summer months. However, as a direct consequence of the measures that he announced this month, mobile classrooms, decades-old prefabs and the occasional shipping container that are either too hot in summer or too cold in the winter will not now be replaced with 21st century state-of-the-art facilities, leaving staff and students at dozens of schools dejected at having dilapidated classrooms after years of work on Building Schools for the Future.

The BSF cuts mean that Halton goes from being an authority with sufficient school places overall to one with insufficient capacity. They mean that an increasing number of children will have their lessons in mobile classrooms when they should have been in brand new schools. With Labour, it was building for the future; with the Con-Lib coalition, it is more like “Back to the Future” of the 1980s, with rampant ideological cuts and failing facilities in schools.

The Secretary of State justified his axing of Building Schools for the Future on the ground that it failed to provide value for money. I suggest to the Minister that precisely the opposite is true. Although the National Audit Office of March last year made some criticisms of BSF, on the question of value for money it said:

“The cost of the programme has increased by 16 to 23 per cent in real terms to between £52 and £55 billion, in large part because of decisions to increase its scope but also because of increased building cost inflation.”

Tellingly, the NAO went on to say:

“The Department and PfS”—

Partnerships for Schools—

“have taken measures to help control capital costs so that BSF school capital costs are similar to most other school buildings programmes and cheaper than Academies built before their integration into BSF.”