Will the Education White Paper damage BSF?
When David Blunkett resigned, we had expected Tony Blair to use the opportunity to reshuffle his Cabinet and to move the unpopular (and in our view unsuccessful) Secretary of State for Education and Skills (Ruth Kelly) into Mr Blunkett’s old office at the Department for Work and Pensions.
This made sense as Mrs Kelly, who has struggled at the DfES, had previously been successful at the Treasury. This would have then allowed David Miliband to move from the Cabinet Office back to the DfES where he was highly respected while Minister for School Standards. Tony Blair was obviously of the opinion that minimal change within Cabinet was the safest political option and so he moved John Hutton from Chancellor to the Duchy of Lancaster (an ancient role that is in effect Minister without a Portfolio) to the DWP. The net result in education is that the White Paper, Higher Standards, Better Schools for All is inextricably linked to the political futures of both Tony Blair and Ruth Kelly (an arch Blairite).
For companies involved in education, having a weak Minister and Prime Minister whose careers are staked on making radical changes in education has created great uncertainty in the market. One example of this instability is the government’s much vaunted Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme. In theory, BSF has been created to speed up and simplify the huge task of building and redeveloping all of the schools in England as well as to drive down the costs of doing this via PPP. A cornerstone of BSF is the ability of Local Authorities and developers to form Local Education Partnerships (LEPs) that may cover up to 100 schools (the scale being a benefit to all parties). However, one of the White Paper’s proposals would allow schools to break away from Local Authority control to become self-governing trusts.
If this were to happen the costs of organising LEPs may be as great or greater than for redeveloping schools via PPP. Many of the companies we have spoken to who have created dedicated BSF teams are worried that the White Paper may undermine the fundamental reason BSF was created. Should this occur, such companies stand to lose large sums and may even abandon BSF altogether, for more the more profitable health and defence sectors.
If Mr Blair and Ms Kelly really want to improve ‘Education, Education, Education’, then forcing through this White Paper is unlikely to be the answer. Should they do so, the government, along with parents and students, will end up paying a high-price for such ill-conceived legislation.