Call for safety review of (PPP/PFI) Edinburgh schools after 17 closures

[Chad]

'Private funding' initiatives - i.e. instead of the government loaning the money at extremely low interest rates, they go to private funders - have led to the deterioration of NHS hospitals, leaving them paying more interest than running costs, or something like.

Now we have schools crumbling due to shoddy workmanship and, most probably, dodgy deals. In England, the government is attempting to convert all the public schools into 'academies' - which have been shown to score lower than average in national assessments. They're basically ways for some people to make a quick buck and potentially to convince people nationalised services are no longer a good idea.

Well, here's the results of the PPPs Private Public Partnership or also called PFIs Private Funded Initiatives (doublespeak strikes again) - these schools are 10 years old. The academies i have seen are built to look flashy but as always, disturbing design and nothing of substance. I understand schools built in the 70's were essentially large caravans - we had a few left at the one i went to in the 90's - but to my knowledge, this didn't leave them drowning in private debt

Also, i didn't like the tone used in the Guardian article posted second - it's impartial to the point of being ignorant of the facts (it is the Guardian) - though it had slightly more info, so there's another more critical from another news site posted first which may suffice (i checked to see if RT had one but not that i could find):

Architect Malcolm Fraser says school closures show folly of PFI scheme

LEADING Edinburgh architect Malcolm Fraser has said the structural problems which forced the closure of 17 city schools show the folly of handing over vital public services to the private sector.

Mr Fraser resigned from a Scottish Executive advisory panel in 2007 because of his concerns over the Private Finance Intitiative (PFI) under which the 17 schools were built.

He said: “The whole industry, everyone realised these buildings were shoddy and they were shoddy in every sort of way - in terms of quality of the environment made for the children and financially they were unbelievably expensive and they were purely an ideological route, they were not good for the public purse, they were not good for education and we are seeing what has come out of that now.”

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He said he had been concerned at the time about the design of the buildings.

“There was no care or concern going into the buildings themselves. Often good Victorian or even 1960s schools, like Craigmount was, were being replaced by inferior contemporary buildings and there was this vast financial and ideological pressure on councils to show they cared about children by spending money. And the government was very keen these complex financial models be used that enriched lawyers and bankers but impoverished the public built environment.”

SCHOOL CLOSURE CRISIS

• 2300 Edinburgh students in limbo

• Edinburgh Schools Partnership facing million-pound penalty

• Safety fears to shut 17 Edinburgh schools

• Full list of schools affected

Mr Fraser said government and local authorities could borrow cheaply and invest in new schools.

“Instead the government borrowed on the never never, using these private deals and believed they were off balance sheet and they therefore didn’t need to show them in the balance of payments. Europe has subsequently ruled that’s not the case. So there was a narrow justification at the time that they didn’t need to show them in public borrowing, but that has since been proved false.

“All of this proves that the best thing the public sector can do is borrow, invest and control and not pass such important matters over to the private sector.”

And he criticised the way PFI operated.

“Things can go wrong on site under any method, but it is particular that this sort of method is one of self regulation. Contractors are trusted to police themselves, so in cases like this there is no independent engineer, no independent architect that are tasked to stand outside the process, inspect the work and ensure these sort of things don’t happen.”

Mr Fraser also spoke about the difficulty of carrying out checks on buildings.

“When everything is covered up it’s very hard to tell where these other problems might lie. You almost need to take a school to bits to find out that these issues are there. You don’t really understand there is a problem until something catastrophic goes wrong, as it has at Oxgangs which has led to all these other inspections.”

And he agreed other buildings could also have problems.

“Schools, hospitals, police stations - all sorts of public buildings came through this. There is a possibility in all sorts of directions.

“We should not necessarily say this means all PPP buildings are going to have problems. We can hope it is isolated to this particular contractor and these particular schools. But for me it is emblematic of the bigger issues when we cede responsibility to the private sector to provide vital public infrastructure.”

Call for safety review of all Edinburgh schools after closures

Educational Institute of Scotland demands checks after 17 PFI schools closed leaving 7,000 pupils stranded after the Easter break
A collapsed wall in January at Oxgangs Primary raised concerns about safety at PPP constructed schools. Edinburgh city council has closed 17 schools, including five secondaries.

A collapsed wall in January at Oxgangs Primary raised concerns about safety at PPP-constructed schools. Edinburgh city council has closed 17 schools, including five secondaries. Photograph: Andrew Milligan/PA

Libby Brooks

Monday 11 April 2016 09.48 BST
Last modified on Tuesday 12 April 2016 11.20 BST

Scotland’s largest teaching union has called for a review of all public-private partnership contracts in Scotland following the emergency closure of 17 schools in Edinburgh because of safety concerns, leaving 7,000 pupils unable to start the new term.

The Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) questioned how construction of the schools, which are about 10 years old and were all built under the same PPP1 contract, was approved, resulting in the serious structural problems.

Larry Flanagan, the EIS general secretary, told Good Morning Scotland: “We’ve been long-term critics of these initiatives, largely because the main contracts have been a huge drain on school budgets.

“We are concerned to find there are major structural difficulties. There is a question mark around building controls and how they are applied. One question is about value for money in terms of how the work was done initially and then an ongoing question of the drain on budgets.”

Edinburgh city council has closed 10 primary schools, five secondaries, two additional support needs schools and a community centre from Monday morning. No date has been set for reopening, and parents and teachers have already expressed their worry about secondary pupils, who are three weeks away from sitting important exams.

Edinburgh city council has said that, while contingency plans are being put in place, some schools will remain closed until the end of the week.

Edinburgh Schools Partnership, which built and manages the buildings, has apologised to parents and pupils, and promised to “accept full financial responsibility for investigating and resolving these issues”.

The education secretary, Angela Constance, told GMS: “The immediate priority is to ensure that everything is being done to support children. We will certainly need answers about what went wrong and why.

“There are, of course, big questions about PFI (private finance initiative) contracts. It’s no secret that this government has long-standing concern but I’ve no doubt that when parliament reconvenes in three or four weeks’ time that there will be renewed interest in this area.”

Andrew Kerr, the chief executive of City of Edinburgh council, told Radio 4’s Today programme that he anticipated contingency plans for pupils would be in place by the end of Tuesday. “We have had lots of offers from our partners – universities, other local authorities and the Scottish government – to help us find those alternatives so everyone in Edinburgh is pulling together to make sure that we alleviate this problem as much as we can,” he said.

Asked about the contracts, Kerr admitted it appeared the schools had not been built to the required standard. “At this stage I’m not sure that anything went wrong with the public-private contract and until we are able to look at the investigations we can’t be exactly sure what the problem is in all 19 schools. However, it appears to be a constructor problem. In other words, the construction of the buildings has not been undertaken to the required standards.”