HC Deb 22 November 2001 vol 375 cc560-8

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Stringer.]

7 pm

Mr. David Heath (Somerton and Frome)

I am grateful for the opportunity to raise the issue of the replacement of temporary classrooms. Indeed, I have raised it before. I cast my mind back to June 1998, when I introduced a Bill that would have placed a duty on the Secretary of State to report to Parliament on the number of temporary classrooms in current use, and to lay plans for their replacement. I would not say that, had that Bill found sufficient parliamentary time to progress, it would have by now cured the problem across the country, but had there been a five-year renewal plan, as I envisaged, we would at least be substantially along that path.

I raised the matter in 1998, when I had been in the House for only a year. I had clear recollections of my time as a county councillor. For the previous 12 years I had tried desperately to wrestle with the problems of funding for education, and it seemed to me that this problem should have been high on the in-coming Government's list of priorities.

At that time, 25,000 temporary classrooms were in use across the country. I should be most grateful if the Minister gave me the up-to-date figure. I suspect that it is slightly lower now, as there have been some welcome changes in capital funding that will have had an effect, but I am sure that it is still a substantial number.

I know the number of temporary classrooms in use in Somerset. Even after the new deal for schools, we still have 618 temporary buildings in use, which represents 818 teaching places, as the jargon has it—or classrooms, in other words. So 818 classes of children are being taught in temporary classrooms. Although the county council is still making progress with replacement, it is desperately slow. I am advised that this year the total of 618 temporary buildings will be reduced by six: five classrooms and a toilet block will be replaced with permanent build.

Some people would have us believe that this is not a genuine problem, and that children prosper. Clearly, they often prosper even in temporary classrooms, because some of them are well kitted out, if not by the basic structure of the building, then by the efforts of the teacher and the children. I have visited many temporary classrooms that are a joy. The children's work is on display, and a pleasant environment has been created.

People also argue that it is necessary to have temporary classrooms because of fluctuating school rolls. I agree that a small number are needed at the margins to cope with fluctuating rolls. Some say that it is not the environment in which children are taught that is important: it is the quality of the teaching, and there is some truth in that. A good teacher is the first component of a good class in a good school. However, I still believe that the environment in which our children are taught and in which we ask our teachers to work is important.

The problems with temporary classrooms are manifest. They are cold in winter and hot in summer. They often have windows or flat roofs that leak, and they are subject to structural failure as they get older, whereas purpose-built, masonry construction usually is not. They put constraints on the children and on the teaching, because they are remote from the main school buildings. Some things are inherent in good teaching practice, such as allowing children to circulate freely from their base classroom to other classrooms, to other parts of the school and to resource centres, without having to go through the rigmarole of putting on their coats and hats and going out into a cold winter's day. That is an important consideration.

As for local education authorities and, indeed, governing bodies, it is important to bear in mind that they are expensive. It is very expensive to run temporary buildings. Heating and maintenance must be paid for, as must keeping the buildings in an adequate state of repair. There is also the problem of vandalism: wooden huts seem to be a magnet for every teenager with a grudge against the local education establishment. Such establishments are easy targets. All those factors make temporary classrooms more expensive to run than their purpose-built equivalents.

We should not neglect the aspirations of governors. We ask people to give up an enormous amount of their time, and to put enormous effort into building school communities—building schools of which communities are proud. They have aspirations for their schools, and their aspirations will not normally include seeing substantial parts of those schools accommodated temporarily in a sort of shanty town. That does not give a good impression of a school, and does not help it to attract pupils. I share the governors' aspirations for permanent, proper, purpose-built accommodation.

We need only think of our own working lives to realise that we would not put up with such arrangements. When there was a lack of accommodation for Members of Parliament, there was no suggestion that we erect a camp of portakabins across the road. No: we had Portcullis House built, at enormous expense—and very good it is too, but what is good enough for MPs is surely good enough for our teachers and children. We ought to have a sense of proportion.

We speak of temporary classrooms as though they were there for a couple of terms and then disappeared. As the Minister knows, the reality is very different. Classrooms described as temporary have been there for more than 40 years, and are well past their design life. In Somerset, 75 per cent. of our temporary classrooms are beyond their design life.

There is a strange nomenclature—a strange jargon—relating to temporary classrooms. "Horsas" have a design life of 10 years. "Elliotts" have a design life of 20 years. "Post panel"—usually "Prattens" in Somerset's case—have a design life of 25 years. All those design lives have being exceeded. The "Horsas" are probably the oldest of the lot, with the shortest design life. Children are being taught in classrooms which, although described as temporary, were used by their parents and, indeed, their grandparents.

Some of these very old classrooms are in a parlous state. Somerset recently conducted a survey of 150 of the oldest and poorest-quality temporary classrooms, and found that 25 urgently needed massive treatment if they were to remain in use. Replacing them with permanent accommodation would cost between £2 million and £2.5 million—but that is not available, and the local education authority will be unable to provide such accommodation. As usual, it will be a case of "make do and mend". There comes a point, however, at which that can no longer be done. I am told that 14 temporary classrooms in Somerset will need what is described as "propping or scrapping" if they are to keep going. That in itself will be expensive: it will cost £23,000. But what does that mean in practice?

I have visited the North Cadbury school many times and know it very well. It is a delightful school in a delightful village and is doing wonderful things with its children. However, 100 per cent. of its pupils are being taught in its four temporary classrooms, one of which is among the 14 that I have just described. Although all the classrooms are elderly and past their lifespan, that one classroom is more than elderly: it is at the point of dropping dead. It is an Elliott classroom and its central beam is collapsing. To make it safe, so that the school can continue operating for the rest of this winter, a hydraulic beam will be installed.

Can hon. Members imagine teaching a group of children in a classroom that has a hydraulic beam supporting the centre? It does not sound conducive to good teaching practice, and I do not know how the school will deal with it. If I were facetious I might say that the teachers may be able to disguise the beam as a Christmas tree for the next month or so, and then perhaps to paint it to resemble a maypole. It is not a proper way of providing an education for those children, but the alternative would be to take the classroom out of use entirely, the consequence of which would be that 25 per cent. of the school's available teaching space was gone. That clearly cannot happen. Moreover, one of the other classrooms is shipping water. The school governors tell me that they do not blame the local education authority, but they desperately need something to be done to solve their plight.

The school governors are doing a marvellous job of investing in information technology, as the Government want them to do. However, they have to place those computers in which they have invested heavily in wooden classrooms that have very little effective security. Even if they were in perfect order, the classrooms would be almost an invitation for someone to take the computers in the next school holiday. The school governors feel let down by a system that does not allow necessary capital investment, and they are not alone in that. I could cite schools across my constituency that are in the same position.

Milborne Port school, for example, which I visited a few weeks ago, has argued for years about the proportion of the school that is in temporary accommodation. Its governors would dearly love to do something about that. Trinity school, in Frome, is one of the most effective schools in my constituency, winning plaudits all round for the quality of its teaching. It has some new building in progress to extend its classrooms, to meet the requirements, but it also has four or five temporary classrooms. I could cite many other examples.

Do those facts suggest that Somerset county council is a bad education authority? I do not think that it is, and no objective test shows that it is. Somerset county has always prioritised education spending, sometimes with great difficulty given the formula against which—not with which—it works. The Government's current distribution formula ensures that every child in a Somerset school receives £1,500 less per year than every child in a school in a leafy London suburb. I think that, in terms of the value that we place on our children, that is a continuing crime.

Somerset county council does it best, but it has simply not had the latitude in capital spending to enable it to make a difference. The Government have made a difference since they were elected; I shall not disguise that fact. When I was chairman of the Somerset education authority, which covers the whole county, we had authority to spend a maximum of £750,000 on the replacement of building stock. There was no way in which we could properly replace building stock with that laughable sum.

Then we had the new deal for schools, and in subsequent years the capital programme increased to £2.5 million, and then to £5 million, which was extraordinarily welcome. However, there is a £25 million backlog in essential repairs and maintenance. I am sure that a similar situation prevails in many other local education authorities.

The Government also introduced the asset management plan process, which is wholly welcome. It is a significant improvement in the way we identify need and the Government attempt to address it. Let me say in parenthesis how grateful I am to Ministers for recognising the concern of LEAs when designing the sufficiency element of the asset management plan in respect of so-called doughnut schools—schools based on the 1970s doughnut design—which would have faced extraordinary difficulties had the Government kept to their original plan.

Looking at the situation nationally, the Local Government Association contrasts the £174 million in 2003–04 to achieve suitability of classrooms with the £500 million requirement for both 2003–04 and 2004–05 identified from the asset management plans. The basic problem is the incompatibility of so many of the Government's policies, some of which are their own and some of which were inherited. Emphasis is correctly placed on class size reduction—I have absolutely no quarrel with that—but trying to manage that within the framework of a limited capital programme, with the exigencies of parental choice on top, means that policy collisions will be inevitable. There is a policy of IT investment, yet there is a lack of suitable premises. There is a policy of encouraging sports education, but again a lack of premises that would allow schools to put that policy into action.

There is heavy reliance on the private finance initiative, yet I am not convinced that it can deliver in this matter. The Minister may tell me that I am wrong, but it is extremely difficult to envisage a lot of disparate sites spread across a local education authority being dealt with by a single PFI programme that would provide for the replacement of temporary classrooms. Even if it did, it is inconceivable that an LEA such as Somerset would he able to make the necessary revenue payments to make a PFI scheme of that kind work effectively.

We have made progress and I am grateful for it. I am riot taking credit for it because of what I said in 1998; I know that it has been a priority for the Government, but a lot more needs to be done. I urge on the Minister a national programme of renewal of the temporary classrooms because, in my view, the teaching environment matters. It is something that we owe our teachers, our children and our school governors. However, it is not the only requirement. We need good teaching, a good curriculum and an adequate environment—whereupon, as has been shown time and again, the children will respond. We should do our best for our children, and at the moment many of our school buildings can be described only as second best. I ask the Minister to consider what he can do in order to further these very necessary plans for renewal.

7.18 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Skills (John Healey)

I congratulate the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) on securing the debate and I pay tribute to him for his concern, which is well established and based on a very detailed knowledge of the circumstances in his area. I looked at the ten-minute Bill that he introduced in June 1998, setting out many of the problems that we faced at that time. Like him, the Government believe strongly that schools must have suitable accommodation in order to be able to deliver the national curriculum. Teachers must be in a good environment where they can teach effectively and, most importantly, pupils must have classrooms where they can learn.

The hon. Gentleman raised his concerns in 1998 and I am glad that he welcomes the changes that have been made since then and acknowledges that, since the Government were elected in 1997, they really have made a difference. Our strongly held view is that school buildings must be improved, and that has been part of the basis of the greatly increased capital investment that we have made in schools since we came to office.

It is worth reminding ourselves that in 1996–97, the last year of the previous Government, central Government support for schools' capital investments was only £683 million, and it had been around that level for many years. That level of investment barely covered the need to provide additional new school places in response to population growth. It did not meet the repair and condition needs of schools that had accumulated during two decades of neglect and inadequate funding; nor did it address the problems of improving and modernising an ageing school estate to meet the teaching and learning needs of the new century.

As the hon. Gentleman acknowledged, in 1997 we inherited a schools estate that was seriously decayed and increasingly unsuited to the task of educating our children because of that underfunding. We have made much progress since 1997. In our first four years in office, we made available a total of £5.3 billion for capital investment in schools. That has allowed us to tackle the worst of the backlog of school repairs, including the replacement of many of the worst decayed, time-expired temporary buildings, which the hon. Gentleman has mentioned.

In November 1999, as part of that programme, the Chancellor in his pre-Budget report made the then unprecedented move of introducing a capital initiative devoted entirely to removing the worst temporary classrooms. Some £43 million of ring-fenced new deal money for schools was made available to local education authorities, specifically so that they could replace temporary classrooms in poor condition with permanent classrooms. That sum was later increased to £150 million. In total, that enabled the removal of 1,500 of the worst temporary classrooms in our schools. In particular, Somerset took advantage of additional opportunities during the four rounds of the new deal for schools to remove some of the temporary classrooms in the county.

As the hon. Gentleman did not acknowledge in this debate, but will know, there have been a number of successful projects in the county, including four in his constituency. At Trinity Church of England first school in Frome, construction work is being carried out to replace a temporary classroom and enlarge three other classrooms. There are similar projects at Wincanton community primary school, Christchurch in Frome and Horsington primary school. The pupils and staff at all those schools are benefiting from comfortable, well designed, permanent buildings.

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will agree that the Government have given the issue high priority in our first four years in office. Under the capital investment programme for schools, we can do a great deal more nationally. We are now providing £8.5 billion in capital over the next three years to improve and modernise school buildings. This year, the figure is £2.2 billion—three times the total in the last year under the Tories. By 2003–04, the total will be £3.5 billion—five times as much as the Tories invested in their final year in office. That is the largest sustained programme of investment in our schools estate for the past 50 years. That investment will enable authorities and schools to make real progress in modernising their buildings, so that they are fit for the curriculum and student needs of the 21st century.

The hon. Gentleman was right to acknowledge the value that temporary classrooms can have. If they are modern and in good condition, they can be useful in certain specific circumstances. For example, they can allow schools and local authorities to cope with sudden, unexpected and perhaps short-term bulges in pupil numbers. They can also speed up the consolidation of multi-site schools on single sites. They can help schools that are unfortunate enough to be damaged by fire, arson attack or other major disruption. They can enable schools with very poor building conditions to be redeveloped without having to close while that work is going on.

Many schools have found that temporary classrooms have other uses. They are frequently used outside normal school hours for the functions and activities that the schools want to run. Although many schools have had permanent classrooms built, they seem rather reluctant to give up the temporary classrooms. The Department regularly receives representations from schools that have had permanent classrooms built, objecting to our removing the temporary accommodation. Temporary classrooms can be useful if they are in good condition and if they are indeed temporary.

The Government have recently introduced two major changes to the system for allocating capital investment in schools. The first is a move from a programme that was essentially bid based to one in which allocations are based on a formula and on a comprehensive survey of the conditions of school building, throughout the LEA area. The second major change is that most of the decisions have moved from national level to the local LEA. As the hon. Gentleman pointed out at the heart of that new system is the asset management plan prepared by the LEA in close consultation, and normally after detailed discussion, with schools, teachers, governors and others in the area.

The asset management plan is the basis for allocating resources for basic need work. It is based on forecast growth and capacity constraints in a school, and it is also the basis for allocating resources for improving conditions and modernisation work, based on pupil numbers and the priority that the plan assigns to conditions in the school. That is the old new-deal-for-schools bidding programme transferred to the local level and rooted in the asset management plan.

The hon. Gentleman spoke with knowledge and passion about his local schools. I appreciate the problems that temporary classrooms cause, because many of them are shared in my constituency. They make it difficult to move children around the school. They are often too hot or too cold at precisely the wrong time of the year and one cannot use temporary classrooms for certain things, such as creating social areas, in the same way as one can use permanent buildings.

I have two words of advice for the hon. Gentleman in an attempt to help him and the schools about which he is concerned. The principal step that they must take is to raise the issues with the LEA and with the asset management forum in the context of the plan in the Somerset area. No doubt they will do that with the support of the local Member of Parliament, who has strong connections with the school committee chair, Councillor Cathy Bakewell MBE. The asset plan provides the basis for assessing the condition of the classrooms, making decisions on priority, planning the work and allocating resources for all the local area. The Somerset asset management plan promotes the removal of temporary classrooms as a priority, and I know that the LEA is planning to add to the money that we can provide centrally for the programme.

My second point is that, despite the changes, the Department for Education and Skills retains small-scale programmes that are bid based. In particular, the targeted capital scheme may interest the hon. Gentleman. He and the schools in his area may find it worth examining. It allows for building investment to deliver educational benefit; it does not deal specifically with the problem of poor conditions in schools. However, if the hon. Gentleman wishes, I am happy to ask my officials to discuss the details of the scheme with him. After he has talked to the schools, they can determine whether it might be suitable to bid on that basis.

The hon. Gentleman may also want to consider a private finance initiative. Some 33 deals have been signed, with a value of more than £850 million and covering 450 schools. Not one deal has been used for, or has led to, the installation of a temporary classroom. Again, he may wish to discuss that point with his LEA.

Temporary classrooms in poor conditions simply do not provide a good learning environment. The Government are determined to improve conditions in all our schools and we have made a great deal of progress in replacing temporary classrooms with well designed permanent facilities. The unprecedented planned increase in capital investment this year and over the next two years will speed up the process across the country and in the hon. Gentleman's constituency and county.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at half-past Seven o'clock.