Which schools are they talking about? The PFI ones or the non-PFI ones?
Apparently schools are not being maintained:
"They just dont have any money… for any kind of maintenance or repairs… more than half of headteachers… are saying they have areas in their school that are just unusable... the worst affected areas are toilets, classrooms & roofs"
Sounds bad. Something should be done etc. The report itself:
A damning poll has revealed school buildings blighted by leaking roofs and windows, damp, mould, asbestos, ageing boilers and fire doors, and even MDF holding up walls.
The shocking findings were highlighted in a survey by school leaders’ union NAHT ahead of its annual conference in Belfast.
It found 51% of its members taking part in England had buildings or areas that were out of use or not fit for purpose.
Leaders are calling for more capital funding for the school estate, with one urging action to ‘end the heartbreak of books versus pipes’ as teaching budgets are increasingly raided to fund vital repairs and maintenance.
More than nine in ten (96%) said they did not receive sufficient capital funding to maintain their school’s buildings and estate.
Gosh.
Now, we did think that this was a problem that had been - in part at least - solved. Not that we wish, not right here and right now, to pronounce upon the Private Finance Initiative in itself and overall. But one aspect of it was that the private organisation that built the school had to maintain it for 20 to 30 years. This was built into the price of the contract.
The reason for this is that we all know that government is not good at doing maintenance. Just look at the potholes in the roads for evidence of that. There are always other things that are more electorally important than maintenance therefore the money goes to those other things more electorally important and not the maintenance. As Charlie Munger used to say - show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome.
So, these schools that are not being maintained. Are they ones that were built using the PFI? Or the ones that are directly managed by the local authorities? That is, is this another proof of how bad government is at doing maintenance?
Tim Worstall