ES/S5/17/18/A EDUCATION AND SKILLS COMMITTEE AGENDA 18th Meeting, 2017 (Session 5) Wednesday 14 June 2017 The Committee will meet at 10.00 am in the Robert Burns Room (CR1). 1. Decision on taking business in private: The Committee will decide whether to take items 3 and 4 of this meeting in private. The Committee will also decide whether to take items to review the evidence it hears on its school infrastructure inquiry at its meetings on 21 and 28 June 2017 in private. Furthermore the Committee will decide whether to consider any future consideration of its draft report on teacher workforce planning in private. 2. School infrastructure: The Committee will take evidence from— Professor John Cole; Ian Mckee, RICS in Scotland; Paul Mitchell, SBATC Registrar and Head of Employment Affairs, Scottish Building Federation; Jim Thewliss, General Secretary, SLS (School Leaders Scotland); Eileen Young, Head Teacher, Linwood High School and member of SLS. 3. Review of evidence: The Committee will review the evidence heard earlier on its school infrastructure inquiry. 4. Teacher workforce planning: The Committee will consider a draft report. ES/S5/17/18/A Roz Thomson Clerk to the Education and Skills Committee Room T3.40 The Scottish Parliament Edinburgh Tel: 85222 Email: [email protected] ES/S5/17/18/A The papers for this meeting are as follows— Agenda item 2 SPICe briefing paper ES/S5/17/18/1 School Infrastructure submissions pack ES/S5/17/18/2 Agenda item 4 Teacher Workforce Planning submissions pack ES/S5/17/18/3 PRIVATE PAPER ES/S5/17/18/4 (P) Agenda item 2 ES/S5/17/18/1 14 June 2017 Education and Skills Committee School Infrastructure Introduction The Committee agreed to undertake an inquiry on school infrastructure in light of the incident at Oxgangs Primary School in January 2016 and the subsequent independent inquiry and report. The Committee agreed to focus its inquiry on the inspection and remedial work of the school estate since January 2016 and the quality assurance practices for school building projects. The inquiry is planned to take three weeks. This week, the Committee will hear from— • Prof John Cole, chair of the independent inquiry into school closures, commissioned by the City of Edinburgh Council; • Ian Mckee, RICS in Scotland; • Paul Mitchell, SBATC Registrar and Head of Employment Affairs, Scottish Building Federation; • Jim Thewliss, General Secretary, School Leaders Scotland (SLS); • Eileen Young, Head Teacher, Linwood High School and member of SLS. The Committee plans to hear from local government representatives next week followed by representatives from the Scottish Government and Scottish Futures Trust on 28 June. The Committee has received a number of submissions on this inquiry and these are included in a separate paper. 1 Background School building programmes Since 1999, a total of 979 schools have been either rebuilt or substantially refurbished, representing over a third (39%) of the entire current school estate1. These projects have been funded through a combination of: • traditional capital financing, where the project is funded upfront from the capital budget, through borrowing or through developer contributions • revenue financing, where the private sector finances the upfront capital costs associated with a project and, on completion, continues to maintain and (in some cases) operate, the asset. Once operational, the public sector makes annual payments (“unitary charges”) to the private sector contractor to cover the capital costs, interest costs and maintenance/service charges. Such payments typically continue for 25- 30 years. The payments come out of public sector revenue budgets (as opposed to capital budgets) Both Private Finance Initiative (PFI) and non-profit distributing (NPD) are forms of revenue financing, also referred to as ‘public private partnerships’ (PPP). (Further details on these funding methods are set out in the Annex.) School buildings are the responsibility of local authorities, but since the late 1990s there have been Scottish Office/Executive/Government schemes to provide finance for specific projects and address the condition of the school estate. Due to pressures on capital budgets and the desire to progress these projects promptly, the Scottish Government led programmes have focused on revenue financing methods. There have been three schemes: PPP1, PPP2 and Scotland's Schools for the Future (SSF): • PPP1 rebuilt and refurbished 74 schools with a total capital value of £535m. The programme ran from 1998 and was entirely revenue financed. • PPP2 rebuilt and refurbished 213 schools with a total capital value of £2.8bn. The programme ran from 2001 and was entirely revenue financed. • Scotland's Schools for the Future will, on completion, have rebuilt or refurbished 112 schools with a total capital value of £1.8bn. The programme was launched in 2009 and is due to complete in 2020. It is using both direct capital and revenue financing. Of the £1.8bn total 1 In 2016 there were 2,528 schools in Scotland 2 value, £1.1bn is being provided by the Scottish Government, with the remaining £0.7bn funded by individual local authorities.2 In addition to the Scottish Government led programmes, local authorities also progress their own plans for their school estate. In some areas there have been large scale programmes such as South Lanarkshire’s modernisation of their primary school estate which began in 2004, involving investment of £812m across 129 primary schools. Since 1999, over 600 schools have been substantially refurbished or re-built under local authority plans outwith the Scottish Government led programmes of PFI and Scotland’s Schools for the Future (see table 1). Note that, because SSF uses a combination of capital and revenue funding, schools built under this programme are classified as ‘other’ in Table 1. Table 1: Number of schools built or refurbished, Scotland of which: Scotland's PFI/NPD Other Total Schools for the Future 1999 to Mar 2007 120 208 328 - Apr 2007 to Mar 2016 168 483 651 28 of which: 2007-08 55 38 93 - 2008-09 44 62 106 - 2009-10 52 51 103 - 2010-11 9 46 55 - 2011-12 7 39 46 1 2012-13 1 59 60 5 2013-14 0 63 63 8 2014-15 0 81 81 5 2015-16 0 44 44 9 1999 to March 2016 288 691 979 Sources: Scottish Parliament S3W-9239, School Estates 2016 and Scottish Government The majority of school rebuilding/refurbishment projects have been funded using direct capital investment. Less than a third of projects have been funded using PFI or NPD financing (288 out of 979 completions). In the period between 1999 and March 2007 (covering the first two parliamentary sessions) a total of 328 schools were built or refurbished, 120 of these under PFI. Since then (last two parliamentary sessions), 651 schools were built or refurbished, of which 168 were financed using PFI/NPD. Of these 607, 28 have been delivered under the Scottish Government's “Scotland's Schools for the Future” programme. The number of PFI/NPD 2 Infrastructure Investment Plan 2015 - Progress Report for 2016 3 projects completed dropped substantially after 2009-10, although some SSF schools have used revenue financing in this period. The Edinburgh schools incident In January 2016, part of an external wall at Oxgangs Primary School in Edinburgh collapsed. Following this incident, 17 schools in Edinburgh were closed due to safety concerns. All 17 schools had been built (at least in part) within the PPP1 school building programme and all involved the same special purpose vehicle – Edinburgh Schools Partnership Limited (ESP). The affected schools had been constructed over the period 2000-2005, but involved a range of different main contractors and sub-contractors. A secure unit and a community centre were also closed due to similar concerns. The problems identified related to wall ties, wall head restraints, bed joint reinforcement and fire stopping. In a report to its Policy and Resources Committee (included in its written submission), Dundee City Council describes the construction techniques involved: “Wall ties provide stability to cavity walls as they connect inner and outer leafs together so that they act as one single structural element. These are typically stainless steel bars installed at a predefined quantity in walls and importantly must be embedded a minimum of 50mm into both inner and outer leafs of the wall. Wall head restraints are stainless steel ties used to connect the top of the cavity wall back to the structural frame to allow wind loads to be transferred to the principal structure. Bed joint reinforcement comprises stainless steel wire bedded in masonry joints and is used to improve the stiffness of masonry walls and assist in wind load resistance. Fire stopping is a system used to seal openings and joints in fire resistant floors or walls, preventing the spread of smoke and fire into other areas of the building.” The Dundee City Council report goes on to note: “The Inquiry determined that the wall at Oxgangs Primary School failed as a result of inadequate wall tie embedment in the original construction. A contributory reason for this was that the inner leaf of the cavity wall was constructed in advance of the outer leaf. Normally, both leafs are constructed together which allows adjustments and tolerance in wall tie installation. Had the wall been built correctly, the structural design was considered adequate to resist the wind loadings and would not have failed. Inspections at the other Edinburgh Schools highlighted similar construction issues and observed areas of missing head restraint, bed 4 joint reinforcement and under-embedded wall ties. Although the inspection concentrated on the components required for integrity of cavity wall construction, a common thread of deficient fire-stopping was also noted during these inspections.” Remedial works were undertaken at the 17 Edinburgh schools during the first half of 2016.