Teachers give bad report to £2bn school building project

Only 30 per cent of teachers who were questioned as part of the study believe the Executive’s 2 billion project is providing value for public money.

The survey, carried out by the main teaching union - the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) - and the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland (RIAS), also found that just 27 per cent of teachers felt their views were taken into account when the final school designs were drawn up.

Sixty schools took part in the survey, and although they are not named, the report reveals some of the damning criticisms that have been levelled at the new buildings.

One said: "The school is not environmentally friendly. The electric lights have to be on all day regardless of the weather as the sloping ceiling keeps the classroom dark."

Teachers at a refurbished school complained that they had been left with an "outdated, inadequate heating system, carpets already needing replaced and paint peeling in a refurbished area".

Ronnie Smith, the EIS general secretary, said ministers and council officials were in danger of wasting a "once in a generation" chance to improve the standard of Scotland’s schools.

He said: "It’s very important that this opportunity is seized to make sure that what we get for the investment is high quality and fit for the purpose for which it is intended. We believe that can only be achieved if the users of the facilities, namely the teachers and the pupils, are closely involved in building the whole thing up."

Under the proposals, around 300 schools will be built or refurbished by 2009. The projects will be funded through a combination of public-private partnerships (PPPs) and more traditional methods.

But in the report, published in Edinburgh yesterday, the frustrations of many teachers are laid bare. One school, identified only as "B", said: "There has been disquiet over examples of clearly poor workmanship being signed off as satisfactory". Another said there was a "lack of storage throughout the school", because some science equipment had not been unpacked since it opened. Teachers at another school were clearly unimpressed by the private deal: "The use of Private Finance Initiative to refurbish/maintain our school has been a disaster. The classrooms and corridors are badly cleaned, the heating and ventilation is a constant problem, most repairs are put down to vandalism and are chased to the council and take an age to fix."

Other schools complained of leaking roofs, overheating classrooms and poor ventilation.

Yet 72 per cent of teachers believed that, overall, their new or refurbished school was having a positive impact on teaching and learning.

Just over half believed their schools would be able to adapt to future changes, such as smaller class sizes, while 67 per cent said their new gymnasia, games hall or other PE facilities were either "adequate", "good" or "very good".

But it was the lack of consultation with teachers that caused the most anger. Only 23 per cent said they were properly consulted on classroom size, and just 18 per cent were satisfied that their views on corridor space were adequately taken into account.

Mr Smith said: "In this day and age, we shouldn’t have comments about inadequate ventilation and storage space. These are really basic things that ought not to be happening in 2003-4, and we think it would be avoidable if the users were involved from the outset.

"This is a missed opportunity. It is vital that teachers are fully involved in the process in order to ensure facilities and schools are fit for their purpose and the needs of our young people."

Ministers are expected to announce the next phase of the PPP programme in the months ahead and Mr Smith said he hoped the Executive and local authorities would listen to teachers’ views.

"We want the local authorities to read this report, absorb it and make sure that when we go through the second stage of the project, we don’t have another survey which paints this kind of picture," he said.

Sebastian Tombs, the chief executive of the RIAS, said the survey raised serious concerns about the Executive’s school building programme. "Our view is that the best way to get good buildings is to use the experience of those using them and put them at the heart of the design process," he said. "You then end up with something people feel more ownership of and have more pride in."

Fiona Hyslop, the SNP shadow education minister, was not surprised by the EIS findings. "These results chime with what I have been hearing from teachers - that new schools are not properly planned, leaving us with classrooms that are too small, corridors that are too narrow, and entire schools not big enough for their purpose," she said.

"Decisions on the school estate have to be taken with education in mind; they have to be taken on the basis of educational and community needs rather than base finance considerations, and must be flexible enough to meet the changing needs of education in the future."

James Douglas-Hamilton, the Tory education spokesman, said: "Local authorities, most of which are run by Labour, are responsible for the design of these new schools.

"If corridors are too narrow, or playgrounds too small or classrooms too cramped, the blame lies with the councils who commissioned the design. The type of finance chosen is totally irrelevant."

A spokesman for the Executive insisted that lessons had been learned and teachers would have their say in future on how schools are built or refurbished.

He said: "This has been the biggest school-building programme in Scotland and we want to see teachers involved in the consultation process.

"Local authorities have learned from these early projects and have made improvements to the process. We learn from things as we go along and we have learned what work can be done to ensure teachers are consulted more."

But Rev Ewan Aitken, the education spokesman for the local authority umbrella group, COSLA, insisted that teachers had been properly consulted, along with other interested groups.

He said: "The EIS need to remember that we consult with a wide variety of people and we can’t take everybody’s view on board and that sometimes judgment calls have to be made.

"But I am confident that lessons about the process of consultation will have been learned and they will be taken into account in the future."