Sturgeon stays silent over school funding

Published on Thursday 1 October 2009 22:18

NICOLA Sturgeon refused to say if the SNP's Scottish Futures Trust would provide any cash for Scotland's crumbling schools when she stood in for Alex Salmond at First Minister's Questions yesterday.

The Deputy First Minister failed to answer questions on whether the flagship trust would provide money for education after the SNP was accused of creating an "inordinate delay" in building schools.

Ms Sturgeon was questioned on the issue by Johann Lamont, the Labour deputy leader, who was appearing for Iain Gray, who, like Mr Salmond, was attending the funeral of Bill Speirs, the former STUC general-secretary. Both paid tribute to Mr Speirs before clashing over the SNP's school-building programme.

Ms Sturgeon dodged Ms Lamont's question when she asked how much money the SFT – the 23 million organisation set up by the government to supervise capital building projects – would "generate" for new schools.

"In the real world, real people understand that real children are being harmed by the SNP's inaction," Ms Lamont said. "This inordinate delay is because the SNP promised to ditch the PPP (public-private partnership] finance method and build schools with the Scottish Futures Trust."

Ms Sturgeon side-stepped that. Instead, she mounted a defence of her government's policy, which this week saw education secretary Fiona Hyslop announce that 14 schools are to be built at a cost of 1.25 billion.

Ms Sturgeon claimed that 150 school projects had been completed since the SNP government took office and 250 would be finished by the end of the its term. "This government, on average, every year is spending more on school investment than the previous government did," she said. "The biggest threat, apart from Labour-controlled Glasgow City Council, to investment in schools is the cuts from the Westminster government of 500 million and growing."

But Ms Lamont retorted saying the government's own press release admitted that the majority of the schools would not be built before 2013 and pointed out that only 14 schools had been identified by the SNP.

"They boast they will build just 55 schools by 2018, and the schools they are starting with aren't the worst," Ms Lamont said. "There are 150,000 pupils sitting in schools right now that the government characterises as falling apart. We know the Scottish Futures Trust is a quango costing a staggering 23m," she said.

The trust paid consultants 120,000 in four months but had generated "not a single coin" for Scotland's schools, Ms Lamont continued.

"What a triumph," she said. "It does take a special kind of genius to come up with an education policy that will have built no schools by the time of the next election, leaves 150,000 children in dilapidated classrooms, costs at least 8,500 construction workers' jobs and sees at least 1,000 fewer teachers."