Buildings or Brains?

Yesterday I posted my reaction to the media-frenzy surrounding Michael Gove's mistake about school funding and his subsequent apology.  Today, I would like to focus on my thoughts surrounding the original plan itself; the plan to renovate or rebuild every secondary school in the UK.

Quite simply put, the Building Schools for the Future project should never have come into existence.  Whilst the principle of the scheme had cross-party support, a large number of MPs questioned the wisdom and cost-effectiveness of the scheme; whilst the Education and Skills Select Committee reported critically upon the scheme.  The reaction of the Select Committee is most notable, considering that the committee itself is made up of largely Labour MPs.

A (Blankety) Blank cheque, as favoured by the dying Labour government.

Such a project as the BSF is typical of the scorched-earth policies of the dying Labour Government.  In the last year or so of the former Government, a number of big-ticket policies and schemes were signed off with little or no regard to the state of the national economy, with the Labour ministers being safe in the knowledge that their government would not be around to have to pay the bills, and that it would fall to Conservative ministers to pull the plug on these contracts and face the backlash.

This is what has duly happened with the BSF, at the expense of Michael Gove.

I, for one, happen to agree with the scrapping of the programme.  In my mind there are far more important things for taxpayers' money to be spent on than new school buildings.  The question that has to be asked is 'what benefit is there to be gained from new/refurbished classrooms?'.

I am sure that some of you will be of the opinion that better schools mean a better teaching environment and therefore better grades.  From my personal experience I doubt this.  During my secondary school years I attended Litcham High School in Norfolk, a school that happened to be somewhat deprived when it came to quality buildings and had no less than ten mobile classrooms.

Those of you who have experienced mobile classrooms will know that they're far from perfect.  They become saunas in the summer, walk-in freezers in winter and they often leak, are draughty or have something else wrong with them.

But I do not feel that my education suffered for it.

I took at least half of my GCSE subjects in these classrooms and I did no better or worse in these subjects than I did in the subjects taught in bricks-and-mortar classrooms.  So for the critics of this decision to cry out that standards of education will drop as a result is misguided at best.

If the Government wants to spend billions of pounds of taxpayers' money on education, then it should be spent on the human aspect, by ensuring that British teachers are the best in the world.  Because at the end of the day, it is the teachers that make the grades, not the classroom.