19 July 2010
The government’s decision to axe the national school rebuilding programme was driven more by dogma than necessity, a leading trade unionist said today.
Brendan Barber, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, told a rally in Westminster that implementing extensive public sector cuts now risked plunging the country back into recession.
‘It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the government’s policies are more about ideology than necessity, and nowhere is that more the case than in education,’ he told protesters at the ‘Save our Schools’ rally.
‘The coalition seems to have made a clear choice about what its education priorities are – and where the resources should go. Not to providing decent schools for all, with good facilities and modern buildings, but to a massive expansion and the creation of so-called free schools, carried out at breakneck speed, with next to no consultation. These reforms are driven by dogma not evidence.’
The rally and lobby of Parliament has been staged to protest against the abolition of the Building Schools for the Future programme. It was attended by the three main teaching unions: the National Union of Teachers, the National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, as well as other public sector unions.
NUT general secretary Christine Blower said: ‘Cutting the budget to rebuild schools is a huge blow to those that have been promised the sort of facilities you would expect in a modern school. Poor learning environments have a negative impact on the education of children, young people and the morale of the community.
‘We are in real danger of returning to the crumbling inadequate schools that were a signature of the last Tory government.’
Unions are pressing for an independent review of the government plans.
But a Department for Education spokesman said: ‘We understand people’s disappointment but the BSF programme was wasteful, needlessly bureaucratic and seriously behind schedule. It was underfunded and over-promised and in the current economic climate it was right to stop it.’
This was not the end for school building, he added. ‘Instead we are changing capital spending to ensure it prioritises schools in most need, and is more realistic, faster and better value for money than BSF. We can now better target primary schools where there is growing demand for places due to demographic shifts.’
The axing of the Building Schools for the Future programme has been one of the coalition government’s most controversial actions. Confusion over which building projects were being reprieved and which were not led Education Secretary Michael Gove to apologise to MPs and local government leaders earlier this month.
Councils are considering legal action over the scrapping of their BSF schemes. Sandwell Council in the West Midlands told Public Finance that the termination of its school rebuilding projects cost the borough £200m in investment.
