Feature Story

A school debate

PPP Journal editor Tom Reynolds provides coverage of a Policy Exchange roundtable on the reform of the UK education system.

Across the Coalition Government's entire public service reform programme, it is in the education system that the pace of change is fastest. Compared with the introduction of Free Schools and the new English Baccalaureate, capital investment in the school estate might not be the most electrifying area of education policy. However, as James Groves, Chair at a recent Policy Exchange roundtable highlighted, we ignore it at our peril.

Tim Byles, the former chief executive of education capital investment quango Partnerships for Schools, set out the scale of the challenge for the assembled debate participants. "There is a perfect storm in terms of the demographic boom in primary age children and an extremely strained capital environment. That cocktail will be lit and ready to go off right in time for the next general election unless something smart is done and quickly." Going into more depth, Byles explained that one of the reasons behind the looming catastrophe was a shift in families' lifestyles. Because of the economic cycle or otherwise, in a break with tradition, people are tending not to move out of the city to leafy suburbs to bring up their children. This trend is creating a particular problem in the capital. "By the next election every borough in London will be at pretty much crisis point or close to it in terms of having sufficient numbers of primary places. That problem will, in time, start to be felt in secondary schools as well," said Byles.

Despite the lack of places in some areas, over 500 secondary schools in England have 20-25% surplus capacity. While these spaces are sitting empty, their maintenance is costing taxpayers. Byles stated his conviction that there needs to be a change of tack that asks fundamental questions about our social infrastructure. According to Byles, there are many opportunities for converting spaces that weren't originally for educational use. He continued: "There needs to be a new approach in terms of mindset. There needs to be an endorsement from parents; otherwise those new schools will lie empty too. But also [we need to think] in terms of the procurement and technical skills that are needed to make that approach possible."

Byles argued that it is essential that those skills and expertise are held centrally in order to redress the balance between the private and public sector. Sebastian James, the retail and property high flier who chaired a review of capital spending on schools estates on behalf of the Department for Education, concurred: "If you want to take the learning from previous school builds, you need to create a really strong, intelligent client. This is a construction industry word; the most powerful way to deliver cost savings is to be an intelligent client. If we learn from each build, we can make savings on each successive school."

James further contended that there needs to be a more strategic method of allocating capital. "We believe that the way in which it was decided where to put the next pound was not right. The most cost-effective thing is not to undertake a project which is not needed. We thought it was important to find a way to say 'what is the next most urgent school' and then allocate capital to that."

The most headline-grabbing and controversial element of the James Review was its findings on school design under the Building Schools for the Future programme, a stance he was eager to defend. "We were troubled by how bespoke these schools ended up being. Contractors were asked to build the best schools they possibly could for a certain amount of money. In my slightly suburban way, I thought, 'Shouldn't you start with what you want and then ask contractors to deliver it in the best possible time, for best possible quality and for the best possible cost?' There was also a very large amount of regulation with which the designs needed to comply – slowing everything up.

"We believe that it's important to have a very clear view of what a standard specification should be, and an idea of what a standard design should look like, and while we think it is important that stakeholders in a school get excited about the build, we don't think that a hand in designing it adds that much," James continued.

Conversely, Barry Sheeman, veteran Labour MP and Chairman of the Commons Children, Schools and Families Committee, outlined in his own inimitable and jocular way deep concerns about design elements of the James Review: "There are some good bits in the report, but look at the membership. Do I want my school environment designed by people from Dixons, Tesco and Mothercare? How much blight on the landscape do we need, for retailing to be taken across to the education sector? When my committee received evidence from David Miliband when he was Education Minister, we liked the fact that he believed in the transformational nature of education. We liked the fact these weren't just construction projects; they were going to transform the very often deprived communities where they were located. They were going to transform the nature and culture of learning." Continuing, Sheerman said: "I am worried that we will lurch back into a period when we don't consult, we don't involve, and we build flat pack schools that nobody really loves. I think people should love their environment."

Providing the perspective of a Free School entrepreneur was Toby Young. As well as being the noted author of comedy memoir how to Lose Friends and Alienate People, Young is one of the co-founders of the West London Free School, the first to sign a funding agreement with the Secretary of State.

Young was sceptical that converting existing parts of the public sector estate into school buildings would be an efficient and viable approach. "One of the reasons that the cost of converting existing public buildings is so expensive is because they have to comply with the telephone directory of legs and regs, 'BB98s'. Because buildings have to be compatible with these mountains of regulations, it isn't that cheap to convert buildings for school use." He then went on to lambast criticism of the review's stance on design. "One of my favourite parts of the James Review is where you try and find out what a 'transformational' effect is but nobody knows what it means. If the answer is that a building can have a positive impact on educational attainment and examination attainment, that's complete voodoo. There is no empirical evidence at all. I don't think that one of the impediments to new build, 'flat-pack' schools is that they will undermine the 'transformational' effects of fabulous, Richard Rodgers-designed glass cubes."

Following the landmark decision to cease the previous government's BSF programme, all of the key stakeholders in the schools estate agenda are waiting with bated breath to hear the Department for Education's response to the James Review. That response will provide the context for all capital investment in schools over the course of the parliament. Many will be asking if Michael Gove's surprise announcement in July of a scheme of school refurbishment PFIs worth £300m is just a taster of what is to come, or the full deal.


Tom Reynolds
Editor
PPP Journal