ATL

Northern Ireland

Many schools are set to close or be amalgamated in Northern Ireland. ATL NI director Mark Langhammer considers the implications

Late last year, Minister for Education John O'Dowd announced that our school estate was to be radically altered. He made clear that Northern Ireland has too many small, unsustainable schools. Many will close or amalgamate.

Mr O'Dowd promised quick school viability audits and tasked education authorities to draw up strategic school estate plans for their areas. He also indicated changes in how the school capital programme would be prioritised, but was silent on how new school buildings would be procured. Departmental staff failed to rule out the continued use of private finance.

ATL has lobbied successive ministers on the dangers of the private finance initiative (PFI) and has now drawn Mr O'Dowd's attention to the recent House of Commons Treasury report on PFI. The report comes on the back of estimates from the Office for Budget Responsibility that the accumulated capital costs of PFI schemes is now above £40 billion, increasing the UK's debt-to-GDP ratio by three percentage points.

Back in 2008, ATL's briefing on PFI for Northern Ireland members warned that PFI "was like choosing an 8% mortgage when you could get one at 4%".

The 2011 Treasury report said: "The cost of capital for a typical PFI project is over 8% — double the long-term government gilt rate of around 4%. [This] means that PFI projects are significantly more expensive to fund … at a significant cost to taxpayers."

Committee chair, Andrew Tyrie, commented: "PFI means getting something now and paying later. Any Whitehall department could be excused for becoming addicted to that. It's like a drug!"

If Mr O'Dowd is reading, it's time to build schools drug-free.