PPP Schools

DadaKopf

So Ireland has taken the step and opened up the state's first company owned, PPP school. Of course opinion ranges from announcements that "it's the new way forward" to "it's the death of the education system".

My gut tells me that it's a bad idea, we only have to look at American schools to get a flavour of this. On the other hand, I have to ask whether it's any different to schools owned and run by religious orders. In both cases, they aren't entirely publically owned: the school administration and ethos is directed by the private company/order and the teachers are employed by the state. The difference is in each respective organisation's ethos - where it's coming from and what kind of effect it has on the pupils.

I'd be interested in hearing people's opinions on the matter. What sort of education should we be looking for? What advantages and disadvantages could a PPP school have? Is it any different to what we've got not? (Whether the school gets handed over to the State in 30 years or not is beside the point.)

bonkey

Stupid question - but what is a PPP school anyway???

jc

DiscoStu

Public Private Partnership

New fangled thing tony blair likes. private industry builds the school/hospital/airport etc. and over a period of time say 20 - 30 years the private industry runs it to recoup the costs and get some profit out of it. then it reverts to public ownership after the set period of time. the good thing is that the states gets its school/hospital/airport etc. built for nothing in the short term and at the end get a "hopefully" fully operational and profitable public service. main problem is no-one has tried this technique in the long term and thee is no guarntee that the school/hospital/airport etc. will be working profitably by the end of the term.

bonkey, your a mod you should know that

shotamoose

Here's the story from yesterday's Indo:

Public-private school link 'the way ahead'

Tuesday December 3rd 2002

A SLIGO post primary school made history yesterday when it became the first public private partnership school building project in the State.

Speaking at the opening of St Attracta's Community School, Tubbercurry, Education Minister Noel Dempsey said that the new system of funding and maintenance would become a major part of school building programmes of the future.

The 675-pupil school in south Co Sligo is the first of five new post primary schools to be officially opened under the new €130m project announced by the previous education minister last year.

All of the projects are being designed, built, financed and operated for 25 years by Jarvis PLC, the company which won the contract and while the initial cost is greater, the Minister said that the projects were more cost effective over the lifetime of the school.

And if the state-of-the-art facilities at St Attracta's are anything to go by, these new schools are set to become the envy of every student and teacher in the country.

The new school features over 30 specialised rooms, including four science laboratories, a fully equipped gymnasium and separate PE hall, two IT rooms and it boasts computers in all of its 13 classrooms.

"The school has been delivered on time and within budget and is providing top class facilities with all the equipment and all the space the students need," the minister said.

Under the new public private partnership deal, the maintenance, cleaning, security, ground maintenance and IT support at the school will be the responsibility of Jarvis PLC for the next 25 years.

This will create a saving not just in financial terms but will free up the principal to give more time to education. It paved the way for larger school projects in the future.

He added: "A project would need to be a certain size to attract the private sector, but as far as I am concerned this will be a major part of the building programme of the future."

School Principal Willie Ruane described the school as the most modern in Ireland, if not in western Europe.

"It is a fantastic facility for the people of south Sligo. Every facility under the sun is here," he said.

He added that the new system would enable him to devote more time to providing the best possible education for the students.

St Attracta's Community School is an amalgamation of two schools, Banada Abbey Secondary School and the Marist Secondary School. It is expected that the facilities will be open to the public in the New Year.

Other schools which are being developed under the Public Private Partnership are located in Ballincollig, Clones, Dunmanway and Shannon, as well as the Cork School of Music.

Meanwhile, Education Minister Noel Dempsey has confirmed that there will be no increase in the capitation grants for either primary or secondary schools in tomorrow's budget. However, both teacher and parent organisations have claimed that the current rates are insufficient to meet the rising costs of the day-to-day funding of schools.

Anita Guidera

© Irish Independent
http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/ & http://www.unison.ie/

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I'm fairly dubious about the economic merits of PPP schemes in general. In Britain they've been justified on some very shaky grounds
- the public sector was assumed to be inefficient, the private sector efficient;
-the private sector was assumed to be taking on the economic risk;
-Treasury discount rates ensured that publicly funded alternatives tended to compare unfavourably to private finance.

In fact, there's no reason why public sector management and workers should be less efficient than private sector counterparts. The record of privatised and partnership-ised services and utilities in Britain shows this fairly clearly. And anyway, what measure of efficiency are we using here? Efficiency at making a profit, or efficiency at providing an high quality service in a responsive and accountable way? As for risk transfer - what often happened in England was that the private operator got into difficulties or realised that it had totally underbid and asked for more money. Naturally unwilling to see a public service go down the toilet, the government bailed them out. Lastly, private finance is not cheaper - government's can borrow at lower interest rates, so preferring to go private stems not from a desire for cheaper finance but from a desire not to borrow.

The firm who'll be managing the school building are Jarvis, implicated in the Potter's Bar crash after building up a huge network of contractors and sub-contractors in which accountability and responsibility effectively evaporated. There's less that can go wrong with a school, fortunately. Still, I'd be interested to see exactly how they'll be making their money back and what kind of employment conditions they use.

Overall, I remain to convinced that PPP schemes are not just cash cows for the private sector, underwritten by the government.

jd

I'm unconvinced about ppp in the educational sector..

I think there is a reference about jarvis here, which has a few perinent points to make (though itwas written by a swm guy).

I think fast food nation* had a bit about allowing commercial enterprises sponsoring schools (eg the likes of Burger King etc giving donations for in school advertising)-not a road I'd like to see travelled here.
jd
could have been Michael Moores "Stupid White Men " either