On 8 April Sebastian James produced his extremely overdue report on schools capital (having originally promised an interim report in September 2010 and final report in December.
So far the government have made absolutely no response to it - nor undertaken any consultation with local authorities or schools about its contents. Here we are in July 2010 with absolutely no idea of the arrangements for capital beyond March next year or what Michael Gove thinks of Sebastian James suggestions.
And yet Partnerships for Schools (soon to be defunct) are running a conference this coming Friday about the implementation of the proposals at which the outgoing and incoming chairs of PfS will be speaking along with Sebastian James himself. No invitations were issued to this conference to local authorities as far as I'm aware so it's unclear just who this forum is intended for! Will this be another response slid out onto the website with no notification that we will have to discover for ourselves?
When will this government start talking to the people who are actually engaged in trying to make the education system in this country work and who still have involvement with the vast majority of schools remaining as part of the local authority family of schools? When will they start exercising the same transparency themselves over the capital funding of Academies and Free Schools as they expect from local authorities? When will they stop pretending to be interested in local decision-making and accountability while removing any democratic accountability from the education system and centralising increasing numbers of powers to the Secretary of State.
And why is Andy Burnham silent on all of this - can it be embarrassment that his party opened the door to this disastrous chain of events?
Comments
http://www.localschoolsnetwork.org.uk/2011/05/head-of-pfs-resigns-to-run...
Cornerstone operates from the offices of SOLACE, the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers in Whitehall. This raises these questions: is Cornerstone paying the full market rent for the use of these offices? If it isn't, could this put Cornerstone at a competitive advantage compared with other firms who might want to bid for public sector capital projects?
And is there any link between the Government's lack of response to the James review, the setting up of Cornerstone and the demise of PfS?
One speaker said that after thirty years if the demographic changed then Cornerstone could return and convert buildings to another use. So someone expects Cornerstone to be around for quite some time, then.
During the question-and-answer session, Byles said a system like Cornerstone was needed to avoid “reinventing the wheel”. This would avoid the construction of “monuments to the egos of head teachers” based on “crazy, half-cocked” ideas about education (I think that statement might have come from Toby Young).
http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/events/event.cgi?id=327
During the question-and-answer session Barry Sheerman said this, “What people wanted was a good system of education delivered by an enlightened and progressive local authority. What worries me at the moment – we are putting very little trust ideologically in the ability of local authorities to deliver and so we’re opening up, you know, an anarchic situation where schools do their own thing and gradually the most prosperous schools in the most prosperous areas will drop out leaving the less popular schools on their own”.
One speaker (it might have been Sheerman) said the spending power of the DfE was the same as it was in 2007/8 and he thought it would be better to do the very best that could be done with that money rather than bringing in private investment which wasn’t “a magic wand”. He reminded the conference of the situation when Jarvis, a private contractor with a large number of LA projects, had gone bust. Many LAs had suffered as a result.
http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/events/event.cgi?id=327
http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/events/event.cgi?id=327
Note to Toby: if I’ve misrepresented you, please correct me. It was often difficult to decide when watching the YouTube video who was speaking. The panel sat in front of a large window and the participants were in partial shadow. As you were at the far end you were barely visible (your head bobbed in and out of view occasionally). And the noise didn’t help – there was a very squeaky door, and a mobile phone rang (this belonged to a member of the panel – very bad manners, I thought).
Add new comment