The Education secretary has announced 14 new Secondary Schools* across Scotland. These schools are to be financed by traditional methods of borrowing.
So what, I hear you say, of the SNP's flagship "Scottish Futures Trust", the all singing all dancing replacement for PPP, the magical money making machine that was to do away with the hated PFI and provide enough money to match the previous, Labour-led, administraton's school-building programme "brick for brick"? Whatever happened to the SFT?
The SNP says that these schools will use the SFT. But they will not be financed by the SFT. How can that be?
Well. It seems that the "Scottish Futures Trust" has been transformed (without actually telling anyone) from
...."an all singing all dancing financing mechanism that will help match the previous school-building programm brick-for-brick",
into ...
..."a wee office in Glasgow where 5 civil servants will use Project Management Software to report on the progress of a few new schools that are actually financed in the same old way as before..."!!!
Right. So no Scottish Futures Trust and just 14 schools and none of them likely to be completed by the end of this Parliament.
That's why we voted SNP, is it?
As I said elsewhere: the SNP lack of vision and ambition for the people of Scotland is so disappointing. Disgraceful actually.
*Any new school building is good news, but to put this figure in context: there were 3 Secondary and 3 Primary Schools built in my own council area by the last administration. So only 14 in all of Scotland, and not likely to be completed any time soon, is pretty mean, is it not?
a little p.s. 6th Oct. 2009.
There is to be a debate at Holyrood on Thursday on the provision of schools. Apparently Fiona Hyslop ducked the last big Education debate (on teacher numbers). Will she hide away again?
Will your pension provide for your old age?
3 hours ago
What is the SFT?
ReplyDeleteEither an act of colossal stupidity or an outright lie to the electorate.
It was obvious before the election that the notion of some sort of arms-length "trust" raising private money by selling "Scottish Futures Bonds" was both illegal and unworkable.
As it has turned out.
Now, Salmond and Swinney may simply have been too thick to work that out.
But recall that they did have in-depth Civil Service briefings before the election.
So it appears more likely that they knew the thing could not work as advertised, but chose to go ahead and lie anyway.
Charming.
And, BTW, when i say..."...there were 3 Secondary and 3 Primary Schools built in my own council area by the last administration..."
ReplyDeleteThe SNP opposed these schools being built using PPP.