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1.29 pm
Mr. Don Foster (Bath): Madam Deputy Speaker, thank you for giving me the opportunity to discuss the important subject of the condition of buildings in the education sector. I thank the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment, the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan), for having agreed to consider very seriously the issues and specific examples to which I shall draw attention.
In the past few days, the media have paid much attention to the Office for Standards in Education annual report. Among many other things, the report highlighted a worrying problem in our schools. Her Majesty's chief inspector of schools said that 2,700 primary schools, which is one in seven of the total, and 800 secondary schools, or one in five of the total, had poor accommodation. He said in his report:
Buildings are in disrepair not only in our schools, but throughout the further and higher education sectors. That affects teachers' and lecturers' ability to deliver education for pupils and students to learn; it also raises vital health and safety issues.
In this brief debate, I shall draw attention to the buildings crisis in the education sector and the Government's persistent cuts in capital allocations and I shall call on the Minister to recognise that there is a growing problem throughout the sector which requires investment rather than cuts. In my opinion, it is somewhat hypocritical of the Government to speak constantly of plans to improve educational achievement while neglecting the fabric of the buildings in which the education is delivered.
The Secretary of State admitted in a letter to the School Teachers' Review Body on 30 November 1995:
Yet this year, on average, English local education authorities received only a fifth of their bid for capital allocation--for urgently needed new buildings and for essential repairs and maintenance work.
In 1990-91, 74 per cent. of Derbyshire's capital bid was approved. That percentage has decreased steadily and this year only 8 per cent. of the LEA's capital bid was approved. Capital spending in real terms on schools is now roughly half its value 20 years ago, and for much of the 1980s was one-third of 1974-75 spending.
In a recent survey that I conducted, it was revealed that £1.1 billion is needed by LEAs in England and Wales simply to make their schools safe for children. Nearly a third of LEAs questioned required more than £10 million each to make their schools safe, and four local education authorities needed more than £45 million to ensure safety in their schools.
One LEA questioned in the survey commented:
A survey by the Campaign for the Advancement of State Education, in October 1995, revealed that more than 20 per cent. of English and Welsh LEAs that replied had one or more primary schools with only outside loos.
A survey carried out by the National Association of School Masters and Union of Women Teachers in Haringey found that 55 per cent. of schools in Haringey have problems with leaking drainpipes, drains and roofs, 74 per cent. of schools have uneven or potholed playgrounds and 64 per cent. have visible cracks in walls--though not so bad as the cracks at Oliver Goldsmith school in Brent, where the west wing is detaching itself from the rest of the school, yet despite the problems at that school Brent council's bid for capital allocation for the necessary repairs was turned down.
The problem confronting many schools may best be illustrated by a copy of a letter sent to the Secretary of State that I received from a Mr. Horner, whose daughter attends the Southowram Withinfields junior and infant school in Halifax. It is worth quoting a large extract from that letter:
How did the Secretary of State respond? In a letter to my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Mrs. Mahon) on 18 December 1995, the Minister said that the bid for the school to be rebuilt had been unsuccessful because the cost of repair would be cheaper than the cost of replacement. That and numerous other examples show how children are at risk in the classroom because of persistent capital underfunding by the Government.
In and around my constituency--in the area of the new Bath and north-east Somerset unitary authority--the local authority's surveyors have identified those repair and maintenance works required in local schools in the immediate future. I have in my hand a 27-page document listing them all. Those immediate repair and maintenance needs total a staggering £7 million.
Some of the most urgent work includes the need for rewiring at Culverhay school, Hayesfield school, Weston primary school and St. Gregory's school. Heating systems need to be improved at Weston All Saints junior school and St. Mary's Roman Catholic voluntary-aided school. Re-roofing is needed at Southdown junior school and Culverhay school and windows need replacing at Twerton Church of England junior school.
All the schools that I have mentioned have numerous other problems that require immediate attention. I have listed only a few; yet this year the new unitary authority received only one third of its capital allocation bid--only £1.5 million compared with the need for repair and
maintenance alone of more than £7 million. It is hardly surprising that one senior officer told me this morning that local government is
In Lambeth, a survey carried out three years ago revealed that £26 million needed to be spent on education buildings in the next 10 years. Since then, however, it has been possible to spend only between £2 million and£3 million and the annual capital grant from the Department for Education and Employment this year allocates Lambeth a derisory £363,000. That position needs redressing and, sadly, it recurs throughout the country.
I hope that the three education spokespeople from the three political parties represented on Lambeth council who are to visit the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment, the hon. Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Squire), this afternoon will be able to persuade him of the need to tackle the problems of education buildings in their area.
Leaking roofs, overcrowded classrooms and outside loos are, in part, a health and safety problem, but a more widespread and equally disturbing problem is that of schools not even equipped to teach the national curriculum. To teach the national curriculum successfully, very many existing buildings need adapting. Given the current tight restrictions, such changes are rarely possible.
The Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment, the hon. Member for Hornchurch, admitted:
How right he was.
It is therefore perhaps not surprising that the Department seems unwilling to repeat its 1986-87 survey of the school building stock in order to establish the current facts. There was a £2 billion backlog of repair and maintenance work at that time and some suggest that today it is more like £4 billion. According to the 1991 National Audit Office report entitled "Repair and Maintenance of School Buildings", the cost of maintenance is set to rise each year until 2000. Nothing that the Government have done since 1991 suggests that that prediction was wrong.
Instead of spending money to bring schools up to standard, the Government seem intent on deregulating area requirements for teaching accommodation. That could remove a statutory barrier to overcrowded classrooms--perhaps that is what some in the education world understand by a "crammer". A letter from the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State to the Campaign for the Advancement of State Education also revealed that health and safety regulations on minimum space requirements--which came into force in January this year--do not apply to pupils or to classrooms in schools. So children face larger classes in shabby buildings.
The Minister might also like to consider the situation in further education and explain to students at FE colleges and universities why they, too, face larger classes, fewer books, aging equipment and shabby buildings. This year's Budget hit the further education sector particularly hard.
Last year's plans for capital funding have been reduced by £49 million or 31 per cent. in 1996-97 and the reduction will increase to £100 million or 63 per cent. in 1998-99.
That is a blow to those further education colleges that need to attract students in order to get funding. For example, at the Henry Thornton community education centre in Lambeth the roof is leaking and the matching Further Education Funding Council funds for community education courses are in jeopardy unless the roof is repaired. The 1993 Hunter survey of buildings in the FE sector revealed that expenditure of about £839 million is needed for the first five years of incorporation. It found that many colleges had inherited a legacy of previous underinvestment, with building stock in poor condition and ill-suited to the learning needs of the 1990s.
However, in August 1995 the Association of Colleges for Further and Higher Education assessed the need for capital investment in the FE sector and found that annual investment of about £40 million will be required to provide just the additional capacity and refurbish existing accommodation for the expanded student numbers. Colleges with increased student numbers also face the acute need to expand. Many have particular difficulties because they are old Victorian buildings on cramped town-centre sites, which increases the cost of providing the expansion.
Yet by 1998 the Further Education Funding Council will no longer be able to maintain the equipment allocation at its present level, let alone provide the separate allocation to support building work. Mr. Chris Pratt, principal of Airedale and Wharfedale college in Leeds, said:
That is just one of the many examples that I could present to the House.
Capital funding in the higher education sector this year has also been severely cut from £347 million to£243 million--a decrease of 30 per cent. That has occurred despite massive rises in student numbers in recent years. The Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals made a submission to the public expenditure survey in May 1995 drawing attention to the pressing need for extra funds for buildings and other capital expenditure, including a backlog of maintenance work totalling a mammoth £1.269 billion across the university system as a result of Government underfunding. Some £840 million extra is needed over three years to pay for badly needed spaces in lecture theatres, laboratories and libraries and £133 million is needed to cover the cost of complying with new health and safety regulations. One institution summed up the sentiments of the higher education sector by saying:
In its recent letter to the Higher Education Funding Council, the Department simply states:
In both the further and higher education sectors, the Government's PFI is no shortcut to better educational buildings for all: it is merely a commercial arrangement
which will not appeal to many businesses. As Peter Reader, head of public affairs at Southampton university, said:
That view is confirmed by Sir Christopher Bland, chairman of the private finance panel, who acknowledged that the PFI might be ill suited to non-commercial academic projects. He stated:
I was pleased to hear that during a meeting with the CVCP yesterday the Secretary of State agreed to look at the concerns that it has expressed about the PFI.I understand that there may be some developments on that front and they are very welcome.
The Government's new initiative for schools--the school renewal challenge fund, which aims to involve private finance in educational buildings--will not help a great deal. The relatively small-scale school projects that are needed are unlikely to attract private developers.As with higher education, it seems likely that developers will be most interested in projects, such as sports complexes, with an obvious source of outside income. Proposals to use private sector cash are totally inadequate. Children's and students' safety should not depend on the good will of the private sector.
"Teachers who lack proper resources or who work in poor buildings experience problems which at best frustrate and at worst defeat their best efforts to do a decent job."
"Further pressure arises from the continuing needs for essential repairs and maintenance to the school building stock".
"£10-15 million would only provide a safe working environment--not necessarily an environment appropriate to the delivery of the curriculum in 1995 and beyond . . . we estimate the cost of bringing all schools' premises to an acceptable standard for curriculum delivery to be at least £250 million and possibly more."
7 Feb 1996 : Column 304
"Only 3 classrooms out of nine are taught in the main building . . . the other six being housed in temporary classrooms which have been placed in the playground leaving virtually nowhere for children to play in. All the temporary classrooms have damaged walls, two have rotten window frames, one has no toilet facilities at all . . . the oldest 'temporary classroom' is now 30 years old . . . is held up with metal props and a central wooden joist has to be fixed across the centre of both classrooms to secure the buildings. This is the classroom my four year old daughter will spend her formative years in in your state education system next year . . . In the main building . . . 55 children share 2 urinals and 2 toilets, the window frames are rotten and leak when it rains, the walls suffer from rising damp which ruins displays of children's work, mould grows on the walls and paint and plaster crumbles and falls from the walls. A recent visit from Calderdale Council, who came to see if the building could be redecorated, commented that it would be a total waste of time and money because the building was so 'sick'."
"not really even scratching the surface".
"I acknowledge . . . that in recent years tight public expenditure survey settlements have meant that allocations available for improvement or replacement work have not been as high as some local authorities might have wished."--[Official Report,23 November 1995; Vol. 267, c. 872.]
"There is no doubt we will be forced to severely restrict growth. This . . . may kill off expansion altogether".
"The 1995 Budget cuts have come at the end of a long and debilitating process and will have a significant impact on the longer term initiatives that are being pursued".
"indicative provision for capital expenditure . . . has been reduced in the light of Government policy that capital goods and projects should, wherever possible, be financed through private sector schemes in line with the private finance initiative".
"PFI firms seem only to be interested in developing leisure facilities, but that's just a small part of what needs funding. PFI is an answer only for a limited area".
"An income stream will continue to determine whether it can be a PFI project: the rules do not change".
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