The Private Finance Initiative (PFI), promoted by Brown when Chancellor of the Exchequer and embraced by the Labour Party, gives private businesses major government contracts to build and run institutions such as schools, hospitals and prisons in the state sector. The spin is that private entrepreneurs have an energy and vision lacking in local and central government and via partnership with the public sector can run a service like an efficient business, respecting the user as a client, and offering customer choice.
Five years on from its introduction, most PFI contracts are causing massive problems: the price of renewing contracts is rising steeply and their duration is increasing. Cleaning, school dinners and pay-roll services are now tied in to non-negotiable contracts for years ahead even where they have proved unsatisfactory. The list of disasters is long: head teachers must pay extra to use their school halls for after-school activities, caretakers refuse to clean up after sick children on grounds of health and safety, schools have to discuss the siting of rubbish bins with Head Office and they cannot take on the Healthy Schools programme because they may not ban junk food dispensing machines imposed by their business partners.
The so-called dynamic business partnerships between the public and the private sector have been revealed as the capitalist relationships they really are. Through a series of corporate take-overs and mergers, one enormous property company, Land Securities Trillium, now owns 25-year contracts for 150 schools, replacing original PFI partnership firms such as Investors in Education and Jarvis. Land Securities Group, the fifth largest property company in the world, has acquired school grounds and buildings with a £1.9 billion replacement value. The control and management of school premises and school budgets is being transferred to more and more distant multinational corporations whose first responsibility is to their shareholders. Some partnership!
Academies – ‘an idea I had sitting in Downing St’
Tony Blair’s farewell tour and photo opportunity took in a 10-minute visit to Northampton Academy school, one of the 46 existing academy schools. There he proudly claimed his legacy, the invention of city academies, and his wish for 400 more such schools. Out of the 3,800 schools in England this is a modest but significant aim. Academy schools are newly-built ‘private state schools’, handed over to individuals, businesses or institutions like the Church of England. For a £2 million contribution the academy owners receive new school buildings (average cost £50 million) and the management of the school. They also get money from the Department for Education and Skills, but unlike ‘state state schools’, academies are raking in the cash, receiving an average of almost £1,600 more per pupil in standard funding than neighbouring comprehensives. Almost £50 million has been spent on advisers for 46 academies, more than £20 million on consultants and £28 million on project managers. This is indeed Blair’s legacy – generous funding for the few, commercialisation of learning, patronage by big business and sectional interests, and an attack on the idea of state provision and local democratic control.
Brown’s passion
Leader Brown says that his ‘passion is education’ – a feeling not shared by the estimated 100,000 pupils who truant each day from lessons. 135,000 candidates will fail to turn up for this summer’s GCSE exams. The number of ‘neets’ – young people aged from 16 to 24 not in education, employment or training – stands at 1.3 million, an increase of 15% since Labour took office in 1997. A survey has concluded that of the estimated 150,000 children ‘educated at home’, 35,000 get little or no teaching.
The oppressive system of endless testing has made education an unpleasant experience for a growing number of students who are repeatedly told that they have failed to make the grade. Brown’s passion will not help them. Tory Leader David Cameron says he supports comprehensive, not grammar, schools. He will not help either. Both party leaders endorse selection by ability and teaching in ability sets from an early age and in English schools streaming takes place from the age of four. A recent study by Sussex University found that 88% of children placed in sets or streams at the age of four remain in the same groupings until they leave school. Professor Boaler concludes that: ‘If the Labour Party really cares about promoting social justice [it must] support grouping policies that promote high achievement for all and reduce, rather than reproduce, social inequalities.’ There can be no ‘ifs’ and no ‘buts’ – the Labour Party is not the party of the working class but the party of PFI contracts.
FRFI 197 June / July 2007
