Fears in Birmingham over school building programme
May 24 2010 By Jonathan Walker
Ambitious plans to rebuild or refurbish every secondary school in the West Midlands could come to a sudden halt after the Government announced it was reviewing a £47 billion building programme.
The decision by the Conservative/Liberal coalition in Westminster placed it on collision course with Birmingham City Council, Britain’s largest education authority which is also run by a Tory and Lib Dem partnership.
Coun Les Lawrence (Con Northfield), the city council’s cabinet member responsible for Children, Young People and Families, said: “We have still not been officially told that a review is under way, what exactly it will look or what the timescale is.
“But the council has already expended considerable time and money.”
The new Government is to re-examine the Building Schools for the Future programme – an ambitious scheme introduced by Labour to rebuild or refurbish every secondary school in the country – in an autumn spending review designed to cut Britain’s massive deficit.
Losers could include 16 Birmingham secondaries which had received approval from the old Government to go ahead with building work, but have not yet signed contracts with developers.
It means schools such as Baskerville School in Harborne, which had been planning to merge with a primary school and move into new premises, may now have to cancel their plans.
Head teacher Rosemary Adams said: “We are just waiting to hear what the situation is. We can’t move ahead without Department for Education approval and we need to know what is happening.”
The head teacher of Handsworth Wood Girls’ School, which is in phase three of the scheme, warned schools in inner-city Birmingham could suffer.
Dr Stephen Nepaulsingh said his growing school of 725 pupils, aged 11 to 18, was short of space. At the moment there are at least five mobile classrooms and another two are needed. Setting up one would cost £60,000, which he said the school can’t afford.
“We would be back to square one, we were hoping Building Schools for the Future would solve the problem,” he said. “If that programme is stopped well the school is in trouble.”
Elsewhere in the school there are problems with the ventilation and the roof of the canteen, which provides free meals for most of the children and has a repair bill worth another £60,000.
Dr Nepaulsingh added: “Schools like ours will suffer, not just our school, but Birmingham inner-city schools in general, so it’s a serious problem. The Government and politicians have to look at that. You can’t have education nowadays for nothing, it doesn’t come cheap.”
Labour announced its school building programme in 2003, but work has begun on just 11 schools in Birmingham. Baskerville is in “phase two”, which means the Department for Education has approved refurbishment plans but not yet allocated the money.
Coun Lawrence said: “I can’t put my hand on my heart and guarantee they will go ahead, because we have not got any clarification of the precise nature of the review that is being undertaken.”
