I’m open to alternative suggestions from CoffeeHousers, but if I were to summarise this government in one word, that word would be “wasteful”. Today’s Guardian, for instance, tracks yet another example of massive squander. Remember the Government’s £35 billion ‘Building Schools for the Future’ scheme (BSF), which Brown says will result in UK schools being the “best equipped in the world for 21st-century learning”? Well, according to the Government’s architecture watchdog, some eight-out-of-every-ten new school designs are “mediocre” or “not yet good enough”. Best in the world? Certainly doesn’t sound like it.
But the greater waste may be that this money’s being spent in the first place. BSF has always struck me as the most literal – and expensive – prioritising of structures over standards. As Fraser has pointed out before – most notably in this article – the successful, Swedish education model has seen schools established in little more than converted office buildings.
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