£1.3bn wasted hiring school consultants reports the Sunday Express
According to the Sunday Express, the Government is throwing away more than £1.3billion on consultants for its flagship school rebuilding scheme.
The article reads:-
Thousands of “experts” are being paid to advise on colour schemes, organise building teams and say which companies should get construction contracts. But critics say the cash should be spent on improving schools.
Shadow Schools Minister Nick Gibb uncovered the wasted money in the same week that an independent report revealed that new or refurbished buildings alone will not raise pupil performance.
Ministers have been forced to admit that three per cent of the total £45billion funding for the Buildings Schools for the Future Programme (BSF) is being spent on consultant services. “
"Ed Balls’s department is woefully behind schedule with its school refurbishment programme,” said Mr Gibb.“Now we see that hundreds of millions of pounds is due to be spent on consultants rather than better classrooms and facilities.”
The figures angered teachers as hundreds of schools face years of waiting before the cash for their revamp becomes available under the rebuilding scheme.An independent evaluation of BSF last week noted that it had made progress in improving its efficiency but is still well behind the Government’s original targets.
Perhaps most alarmingly, the investigation by PricewaterhouseCoopers concluded that pupils would not improve academically because school buildings were either rebuilt or done up.
Significant other changes in how the school operated were found to be essential to any real improvement.One head teacher, whose school was totally rebuilt, told researchers: “I have inherited staff from the old school and some are brilliant but some not so much. A good 60 per cent of staff have not changed their teaching practices. "There is a long way to go to break the culture and cycles they are in. We’ve succeeded with students but it’s harder to engage the staff.”
When the plan to overhaul England’s decrepit schools was announced in 2003, ministers pledged to have 200 schools rebuilt or refurbished by the end of last year. So far, only 50 have been completed with teachers reporting a “significant drop in morale” when they wait for refurbishment.
One teacher, who asked not to be named, said: “If you are earmarked for a revamp local authorities stop spending money doing quite important repairs because they know it will all be done eventually under BSF. That’s all very well for pupils in the future, but it makes those currently attending the school feel that no one cares about them.”
Over the last two years, spending on consultants in Ed Balls’s Children, Schools and Families department has more than doubled. The amount spent on consultants rose from £30million in 2005/6 under the Department for Education and Skills to £72million in 2007/8. That money could have paid for more than 2,000 teachers.
In the last two years the Department has presided over a series of debacles, including the SATs fiasco and chaos surrounding this year’s Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA) payments.
Shadow Children’s Secretary Michael Gove said: “It’s extraordinary that spending on consultants has more than doubled in two years even though Ed Balls’s department is smaller than its predecessor. “Despite spending millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money extra on outside help, on his watch the department has lurched from one fiasco to another, whether it’s losing thousands of exam papers or chronic delays to student maintenance payments.”
Further delays to BSF may occur because of the credit crunch. Construction industry leaders say that if the private funding often needed to top up individual projects dries up, many schools may have to wait even longer for much needed refurbishment.
Margaret Morrissey, founder of the education pressure group Parents Outloud, said: “Building Schools for the Future was a grand scheme, announced with typical Labour fanfare. It promised much, but as with most things, the reality has been a disappointment.”
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/81742/-1-3bn-wasted-hiring-school-consultants
