Education, Culture and Sport Committee, 22 Feb 2000

Meeting date: Tuesday, February 22, 2000

Official Report 153KB pdf

---

School Infrastructure

Members have in front of them a paper that includes a remit, an approach and a timetable for the school infrastructure inquiry. We will look at each of those sections in order. First, are there any questions or comments on the remit?

The remit is broadly sound. My only comment is on the second bullet point:

"the adequacy of the standards and specifications applied by authorities to school buildings".

I would like to add the words "and other infrastructure", because in other parts of the remit there is reference to the fact that we need to look at sports facilities and so on. Those three extra words would broaden the remit a little further.

I agree with Lewis Macdonald that, broadly, the remit is fine. I do have a comment on the first bullet point. Obviously, we want to review the information that is currently available about the state of school buildings, but we should also have a role in gathering information that is not readily available, and in encouraging local authorities and the Executive to get that information into an accessible form. The bullet point could be amended to suggest a more proactive role.

The one thing that strikes me is that while it is important that we do this in a Scottish context, there is nothing in the document about comparisons with people who have similar difficulties. It might be interesting to know of alternative approaches. That might be a piece of desk-based research to start with, perhaps from the Scottish Parliament information centre, but it might be necessary to look at the situation elsewhere.

In the west of Ireland, for example, rural areas have witnessed a large explosion in population, and the concomitant building of new schools. The issue of the repair of infrastructure has arisen there, and there have been different approaches to it. After the desk-based research, we might want to ask whether the committee should look at what has happened in Ireland or Europe, where similar problems have been tackled.

You have suggested the west of Ireland. Do you have anywhere else in mind?

In Europe, issues have arisen over decaying infrastructure that has had to be revived. Some interesting new situations have been built from scratch.

Are you happy for us to approach SPICe?

We could start with that.

One good non-European example, which may sound like a strange one, is in Singapore, where interesting work is being done to rebuild school buildings without using private finance. That might be worth looking at.

I know that I am just back from India, but I am always available.

We do not want any facetious comments, thank you.

But he wants to write a report.

No.

With the addendums that Lewis Macdonald and Nicola Sturgeon have suggested to the first and second bullet points, are we agreed that that is the remit?

Yes.

Secondly, are there any comments or questions on the approach of the inquiry?

I have two or three points to make. The first bullet point is fine, but we should add another section to the second bullet point. Obviously, the views of local authorities on public-private partnerships, or private finance initiatives, are important, but we should also try to get some academic evidence on the merits of using private finance in schools. I suggest Professor Colin Mair of the University of Strathclyde. He is an expert in this field and would be able to give useful written evidence.

On the next bullet point, is there any reason why the committee cannot write separately to all school boards, rather than rely on local authorities to make the inquiry known to them? If the Scottish Executive can write to all school boards, I do not see why we cannot.

My final point concerns the memorandum from the Executive outlining current national policy. We could have written that ourselves. It is more important to find out from the Executive whether it has any plans to change the way that it does things. I am amazed that there has been no national audit of school infrastructure in Scotland in living memory. It would be useful to have the Executive's thoughts on instituting a regular audit of how bad or how good school infrastructure is.

Mike, do you want to say something?

No. I was nodding in sage agreement with what Nicola Sturgeon said.

We should get the views of the trade unions. We should talk to the unions that work in schools. Obviously, we should talk to the education unions, but we should also talk to unions such as the Transport and General Workers Union, the General, Municipal and Boilermakers Union and Unison, which will have particular views on school infrastructure because they are responsible for the maintenance of the infrastructure and the construction of the new buildings.

I am happy to follow the suggestions that we have heard with regard to the academic side. We might want to ask SPICe if there are any other academics whose views we should hear.

As Nicola Sturgeon said, we should write to school boards but, given the evidence that we heard last week, we should write to parent-teacher associations as well.

That shows that we listen.

I draw members' attention to the last paragraph. The committee was keen to ensure that we had a divide between urban and rural areas and that we use this inquiry as an opportunity to take evidence on-site. We will consider proposals about where we could go.

Is the committee happy to take on board the points that have been made today?

Members indicated agreement.