Good teachers better than new buildings

The Government has scrapped schools' BSF scheme, the Building Schools for the Future programme to upgrade school buildings. It's a shame as I'm sure a good school environment aids increasing standards. But is it that simple?


 A letter in Wednesday's  London Evening Standard form David Perks, the head of physics at Graveney School in Tooting, claims that it might be a 'blessing in disguise'. He says that 'BSF was a massive social engineering project designed to banish whole-class teaching and reinforce a child-centred approach to learning, this time rebranded as personalised learning.' Interesting point of view.

Looking back to my school days, I remember we had to share text books "one between two"; but our sports facilities were excellent (we had our own indoor swimming pool and large playing fields). In an ideal world all British schools would have excellent, modern, state-of-the-art facilities and building infrastructure and we'd all cheer. But it would appear that this is not the crucial factor in determining academic standards.

According to the 2007 report by the OECD, at a time of high spending on education by the last Labour government, the UK actually slipped down the international league tables in reading, maths and science. Finland and South Korea were the top nations.

The UK spends 5.5% of GDP on education - above average for schools (although below average for universities). So spending is clearly not the whole picture. It is noticeable that in many British state schools teachers do not have to have a university degree in the subjects they are supposed to teach. Teaching is not seen, in this country, as an elite profession. In Japan teaching science requires a masters degree and is highly lauded. It looks as though as a society we have a lot of work to do in shifting cultural beliefs and social mores around learning. It is also interesting that 2nd generation children from certain immigrant groups in the UK outperform their white, British co-students. Children of Indian, Chinese, Irish and east European ancestry achieve above-average results (children from Bangladeshi and West Indian backgrounds achieve below-average results).

I don't know enough about modern teaching methods to comment on David Perks' claims in the Standard. However I do know that parents' attitudes, the standards of teachers, the rigour of teaching methods, discipline in the classroom and damned hard work from students will probably make more of a difference than gleaming new buildings, a desirable though they undoubtedly are.