Building (Education Sector) (Hansard, 7 February 1996)

§ 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: 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. 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: Further pressure arises from the continuing needs for essential repairs and maintenance to the school building stock". 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: £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. 304 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: 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'. 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 305 maintenance alone of more than £7 million. It is hardly surprising that one senior officer told me this morning that local government is not really even scratching the surface". 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: 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.] 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. 306 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: There is no doubt we will be forced to severely restrict growth. This … may kill off expansion altogether". 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: 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". In its recent letter to the Higher Education Funding Council, the Department simply states: 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". 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 307 which will not appeal to many businesses. As Peter Reader, head of public affairs at Southampton university, said: 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". 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: An income stream will continue to determine whether it can be a PFI project: the rules do not change". 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.

The Government are introducing gimmick after gimmick into the education system, but they will not provide enough money to make schools safe for children. In the age of the information super-highway, school children have to use outside loos and students work in overcrowded, and at times unsafe, lecture halls. Decent buildings are vital if we are to meet high quality educational objectives. Buildings in a poor state of repair have a direct impact on the quality of learning, and failure to provide adequate maintenance eventually results in crisis management. Buildings that are in good repair encourage learning, helping to keep down truancy levels and boost morale. Badly maintained buildings encourage vandalism which, as well as reducing the quality of the teaching environment, increases cost.

I urge the Government to invest in the building stock throughout the education sector. Schools, colleges and universities should be safe and fit places for teachers and lecturers to teach and pupils and students to learn. Safe, adequate buildings are an entitlement and not a luxury. Yet as time passes and underfunding persists, the decay of buildings in the education sector continues. It is time for the Government to halt that decay.

§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Mrs. Cheryl Gillan)

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) on obtaining this Adjournment debate on an extremely important issue. It was useful to hear the points that the hon. Gentleman made. I am only sad that there are not more hon. Members on the Opposition Benches— I always thought that education was at the top of their agenda.

The hon. Member for Bath made a number of different points in his characteristically direct way. The common theme that ran through them was that problems are the 308 Government's responsibility—local authorities, schools, colleges and universities have been starved of the resources that they have sought to put matters right; the world would be rosy if only more money were available; and the taxpayer's pocket has, yet again, to be the source of that money.

I shall respond to the hon. Gentleman with a few plain facts. It might be hard for him to admit this, but the truth is that, during this decade, substantial sums have been directed towards improving and renewing educational buildings. For 1996–97, we have announced record levels of support for capital programmes—just short of £700 million. Add to that the substantial support that we announced for the previous two years and one arrives at centrally available support totalling just short of £2 billion over the three-year period.

The hon. Member for Bath should note that allocations for basic and exceptional basic need are much higher for 1996–97 than they have been in recent years— £6.6 million compared with £2.5 million in 1995–96. That central support is not, as the hon. Gentleman knows, a limit of any kind on spending on school buildings. Local education authorities can, and do, add substantially to the sums available through grants and borrowing approvals by investing capital receipts and funds from their revenue budgets.

We have made it easier for LEAs to do that in a number of ways. For example, for the two years from April 1996, they will be required to set aside only 25 per cent. of proceeds from the sale of surplus assets for debt redemption, as opposed to 50 per cent. as at present. That will mean that more money still will be available for new capital projects. As a result, we estimate that, since 1990, more than £5 billion has been spent on county, voluntary-aided and grant-maintained school buildings.

The hon. Gentleman quoted some historic figures on capital spending. I say "historic" because he had to go back 20 years to find figures that came remotely near to meeting his case. Of course capital spending was higher in 1974. At that time, pupil numbers were much greater and were rising so rapidly that new buildings were needed to accommodate them. A closer look would reveal that history tells a rather different story about what happened next.

Between 1974 and 1979, capital spending on schools fell to less than half the present figure in real terms— and we all remember who were sitting on this side of the Chamber between 1974 and 1979. By contrast, since the Conservatives came to office in 1979, capital spending on schools has increased by some 15 per cent. over and above inflation.

The hon. Gentleman quoted from the annual report of Her Majesty's chief inspector of schools. I scarcely need to add, "selectively". It is perfectly true that the report notes that a minority of secondary schools and a rather smaller minority of primary schools suffer from "some shortfall in accommodation", but it notes also the efforts that have been made—they will continue to be made— to deal with the more serious problems. As the chief inspector states, common sense would suggest, that effective teaching depends on more than the physical context in which the teacher works". It is, yet again, the same message—making the best possible use of the available resources is what counts.

309 In the further education sector, capital funding has risen from £151.8 million in 1993–94 to £159 million in 1995–96. Capital spending, moreover, has shot up since incorporation. Many further education colleges, using their own initiative, have taken advantage of their new independence to raise private finance. To date, FE institutions have raised more than £100 million.

Higher education has, quite rightly, been one of the fastest-growing programmes in recent years. Universities have invested significant sums in their capital assets. The present aggregate level of borrowing amounts to more than £1.5 billion.

The hon. Member for Bath expressed some anxiety about outside lavatories in some of our oldest school buildings. I remind him of something that I am sure he already knows—that it is for local authorities and school governors to set their priorities for capital work on the school buildings for which they are responsible. I do not decide which work proceeds and which does not in local authority schools—LEAs and governors do. The hon. Gentleman should not ask me or my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Employment about why some work has been done while other work has not. If the hon. Gentleman wants to know why there are still schools where children have no choice but to use outside toilets, he should speak to his friends in local education authorities. They should be able to give him an answer.

In the case of county or controlled schools, it is up to the LEA that maintains them to decide how high a priority to give such work. If the schools are voluntary aided, such work would be classed as minor, to be paid for from the formula allocation administered by the local education authority. I see that that comes as a great surprise to the Liberal Democrat education spokesman. Minor works and improvement/replacement formulae, and other funding sources—including receipts—have been available to LEAs for some years and it has been open to them to use those sources to meet their priorities. The hon. Member for Bath should ask his friends in local authorities what scope they have for efficiency savings. The hon. 310 Gentleman should ask also what efforts have been made to address the efficiency savings identified by the Audit Commission.

The Government want to encourage a more imaginative approach to capital funding in schools. That is one reason for my announcement in December that we shall set up the schools renewal challenge fund; we want to encourage better and more prudent use of capital assets. The fund, which will operate for the financial year 1996–97, will assign resources on a competitive basis for the renewal, repair, replacement or improvement of school capital stock. Account will be taken of the urgency of the project, which should provide value for money while levering in an additional element of resources from non-Government sources, particularly through the private finance initiative—which the hon. Gentleman chose to rubbish, without having a great depth of knowledge of the initiative's extent and of its potential for our schools.

Once again, the hon. Member was scaremongering. I want to put this on the record, in plain language that the hon. Gentleman will understand: health and safety is the responsibility of LEAs and governors. Will the hon. Gentleman please understand that our revised premises regulations will maintain each and every standard that bears on the health and safety of our children?

The picture is far from the study in grey that the hon. Member painted. I believe that the hon. Gentleman, behind the rhetoric, knows what we know—that the Government have an excellent record on education spending. He might laugh, but our record contrasts with the policy that the Liberal Democrats promise. To what does that promise amount? We know now. I refer to the education section of a widely circulated document that has the words, "very limited circulation" on the front. It is spelt out as a point of weakness. Liberal Democrats just want to throw money at education. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman's speech confirmed that that document is alive and kicking, and is living in the Liberal Democrat policy unit.