Despite claims to the contrary from the Labour party, it is simply not true that the scrapping of Building Schools for the Future was a breaking of a promise made by George Osborne not to cut the totals of capital spending. A casual glance towards the actual budget would make it clear: the Government will make no further cuts to capital spending compared with the plans that it inherited. It did make clear, however, that it would undertake a fundamental review of all capital spending plans to ensure they are affordable and to identify the areas of spending that will achieve the greatest economic returns. Michael Gove made it clear in his statement to the house that he was cancelling the approach of BSF because it was an expensive, long winded and inefficient way of building schools. He did not say he was cancelling all new schools building. According to the actual figures the Coalition government is going to spend as much on new capital projects as the outgoing Labour government, in that case they might end up building more schools than Labour for the same amount of money.

Looking at the cost of the programme in February 2004, the DCSF said that 200 schools would be built by 2008. In fact only 42 (just under a quarter) were ready in that timescale. The National Audit Office estimates that the overall cost of the programme has also increased by 16-23% in real terms, with delays being more and more frequent over the years it has been in place, in 2007, in a memorandum to the Select Committee for Education and Skills, the Government admitted: “There has been significant slippage in BSF projects in waves 1-3, with the majority of projects behind the ideal project timelines, an understatement given the actual number of these schools that have been opened , and recently Nottinghamshire county council spent £5 million on the scheme without a single brick being laid, another report by the Public Accounts Select Committee found that “the Department and PfS has wasted public money by relying on consultants to make up for shortfalls in its own skills and resources.” Has the Labour obsession with stocking up on masses of consultants been the driving factor around high cost and low results? The current approach isn’t good for school buildings, this isn’t good for the public finances, and it isn’t good for the both the children and teachers in any school across the country. Nor is it good for the people in the local area who object to some of the proposals made , a number of schools that local areas wanted to keep open or refurbish have been demolished. The Victorian Society says that a number of fine Victorian schools have either been demolished or taken out of use as a result of the programme. Many local authorities as well as a large number of other senior figures working on BSF have expressed concerns about the role of Partnerships for Schools (PfS) – the quango charged with delivering the BSF programme. One described them as “marching round the country in their jackboots, telling local authorities what to do” One example of which being that schools that were using BSf funds had to use 10% of the sizeable budget for computers and other technology, despite the spurious evidence it improves standards, and not being clearly taught how to use it (A common feature of all my old lessons.)

Why should we persist with an expensive bureaucratic programme which tramples on any concerns that don’t correspond with the wishes of Ed Balls? Some headteachers have said they had feared that their funding might be jeopardised if they were critical publicly of a programme representing such powerful interests, no-one denies that we need to build more schools, no-one denies that some schools need to be refurbished, but we can do this in a much better way, which some Tory MPs should attempt to understand.

As well as stamping out the message that has been blared out in the media that there will be ‘no new schools’ the coalition need to also quash the outlandish claims from the Labour party that BSF improved school standards, BSF is a bit like buying a new TV – the new set looks great when you put in the corner of your sitting room, but it’s the programmes that actually make you want to keep coming back for more – and after a while, you forget that you have even got a new telly! If the programmes haven’t improved in the meantime, everything goes back to how it used to be. The Labour party have repeatedly said that BSF is not just a “bricks and mortar programme” and that the buildings programme should act as a “catalyst” for wider scale “educational transformation”, they’ve attempted to define “educational transformation” many times, yet its definition has always been unclear. One senior advisor and former headteacher felt that the coupling of new buildings with “transformation” meant we might be erecting the 21st century equivalent of Victorian follies, saying: “I think there is a danger that we will build chrome and glass edifices to the egos of certain headteachers.” (Which judging by the treatment given to alocal headteacher that lent a lot of support for the Labour party in exchange for a glass palace may well be true.)

It isn’t just speculation that pours cold water on the claims that BSF drastically improved standards. An exhaustive report for the Design Council found “clear evidence that extremes of environmental elements (for example, poor ventilation or excessive noise) have negative effects on students and teachers and that improving these elements has significant benefits. However, once school environments come up to minimum standards, the evidence of effect is less clearcut. Our evaluation suggests that the nature of the improvements made in schools may have less to do with the specific element chosen for change than with how the process of change is managed.” PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) for the Government in its first evaluation of BSF in 2007 following a review of the literature in the US and the UK this report concluded that, while there was a clear negative impact of poor design on attainment, the claim that good design brings benefits needed to be tested further in the BSF programme because the causality could not be proved. Other factors affecting attainment are, unsurprisingly, school leadership, pedagogical factors, socio-cultural factors and the curriculum. Its second evaluation, published in January 2009, reinforced this view: “In the statistical analysis of the impact of capital expenditure on pupil attainment, our results mirror the existing literature in not finding a strong correlation between the two. The results as a whole suggest a positive impact of capital on attainment, but the magnitude is likely to be very small. We also found evidence for considerable diminishing returns to capital investment.”

The coalition must stress that pedagogical factors that were mentioned in the PSC review are going to be tackled through the introduction of ‘Free Schools’ and the expansion of the Academy programme which will allow for different styles of teaching to thrive, rather than focus on school buildings like the Labour party will insist on doing as it is the most obvious thing to attack , it’s key to highlight that Ofsted recently failed one of the first schools to be built through the BSF programme, Sandon High, in Stokeon- Trent, to give weight to the idea that other things must be tackled other than buildings, and can achieve emphasis on different style of teaching through holding up examples like Toby Young’s grammar comprehensive, and Lord Young’s technical colleges . We must stress the waste of money and the use of consultants, the crippling of autonomy of teachers, and constantly remind as to what benefits these new schools can bring.

We base our results on what our children learn, not the number of glass palaces we claim (and fail!) to build, and as for Gove’s delivery when he announced the policy? Well, there may well have been some stichup on the way….

I’ve been to the theatre twice this week – once to see Counted, and once to see Jerusalem. Both, in their different ways, were deeply thought-provoking. In between, I’ve been moving house and unpacking box after box while half-listening to the election campaign.

Counted was completely different to what I expected from my conversation with the directors. It’s short, very depressing, and doesn’t seek to offer any explanations or justification. It’s full of people who make many choices in their lives (on which no judgement is offered) but just don’t do anything about the bigger picture – except that one man who campaigned about his local traffic lights. I wouldn’t have said it’s entirely a laugh a minute night out, but it should be required viewing for every politician.

If I didn’t know better, I would say David Cameron’s Big Society team had been to see it years ago: the interviewer’s main aim was to underline how the people he spoke to DID have choices in their own lives, and COULD achieve the things they really wanted if they got involved. It was all very down-beat though; there were no glib or quick-fix answers.

This afternoon, while unpacking the last box, I listened to David Cameron at the rally in Batley and Spen, surrounded by a huge group of parents and teachers who want to set up their own school, but whose council keeps refusing. Those people were immensely engaged in their community and were willing and able to put in the work that is required – but the state just kept saying no. The Big Society is about saying yes.  Michael Gove has already said yes. People just need to vote for a Conservative government (I know that’s glib. But it’s true – the legislation is ready to go).

The point, I think, of Counted is that unless people see an effect from their choices, they will become less and less engaged in them and eventually just withdraw from anything approaching a community or society. The only way to reverse this is to hand power back to people and for the state to say yes.

Tickets for Counted, which runs until May 22, are available here

On Friday, Ed Balls announced the Government’s response to the ‘Salt Review’ into the supply of teachers for pupils with severe and complex learning difficulties. Balls argued, and rightly so, that the Government needs to attract and incentivise graduates to specialise in teaching children with some of the most challenging needs.

However, children with severe and complex learning difficulties only made up 2.3% of all children with Special Educational Needs (SEN) in 2009. There are 1.7 million children in England with SEN, 21% of all pupils, and the majority are taught in mainstream settings. Therefore, all teachers are working with SEN children but there is a shocking lack of focus on building the relevant skills and expertise, both at the initial teacher training stage and in ongoing training throughout teachers’ careers.

Despite this, buried within the Government’s 2004 SEN strategy (which probably remains the most comprehensive look the Government has taken at the area in recent years) is an eminently sensible approach to providing teachers with the appropriate expertise. According to this model allteachers would develop the core skills needed to deal with all children with SEN; some teachers, inall schools, would develop advanced skills; and there would be teachers with highly specialist skills, in some schools but available, where appropriate, to all.

Progress in implementing such a vision has been inadequate. Another recent Government report (the Lamb Inquiry) stated the case clearly, there is an urgent need:

“to build a better understanding of SEN and disability into every aspect of training; at every level of the system; in subjects and curriculum development; and for teachers with a range of different responsibilities.”

This should be the focus of any strategy concerning teacher training for SEN, putting its own model into practice, and thereby providing over a fifth of our children with the education they really deserve.

Ralph Hartley is a research fellow in Policy Exchange’s Education Unit

Governments are under enormous pressure especially in Britain where both main political parties are pressing for immigration to be an issue at the next general election with a race to the bottom of who can impose the strictest controls. They face conflicting pressures: significant levels of resistance to increased immigration in public opinion on the one hand, and sound economic and social rationales for the relaxation of entry barriers on the other. By creating a true property-owning democracy, Margaret Thatcher ensured that the vast majority of us have an active interest in a Conservative ideology. A masterstroke. What we must not allow to happen is the likes of Nick Griffin redefining the narrative – contrary to the evidence – around immigration.

The massive inflows associated with European Union accession led neither to the displacement of local workers nor to increased unemployment in the UK. Simulations following the European Union accessions of 2004 suggest that output levels in the United Kingdom and Ireland, which allowed large-scale inflows from the new member states of Eastern Europe, would be 0.5–1.5 percent higher after about a decade, and the net fiscal figure for the United Kingdom at the present time is ± 0.65 percent of GDP. Given that the recovery of our economy is so fragile, it would be madness to place more restrictions on immigration, and it isn’t the reason we have a legion of NEET’s across the country – it’s Labour’s failure in education that has let a generation of young people down.

It is easy to make cheap platitudinous statements defending the Labour government’s abysmal record in education (remember its slogan Education, education, education), but the hard work of the pupils and teachers is irrelevant if it is directed (by the government) toward means that give them and the country so little benefit.

Can anyone say that more choice, more competition, more efficiency, more responsiveness to parents and more resources spent on actual teaching wouldn’t be the best thing to do? Because that’s what would happen under a Conservative Government.

Students don’t get suitable careers advice and end up not picking suitable A-Levels for their choice of university/career/life simply because no-one told them what the implications of their choice were. Can anyone tell me how Conservative policy isn’t the right thing to do instead?

The Labour party’s response to the crisis in education is simply to extend the pain by raising the school leaving age in an attempt to delay the consequences of their failure to live up to expectations they set in 1997. As a way to improve educational standards, and to act as a cure for unemployment evidence shows this to be suspect. Is it any surprise that social mobility has decreased under Labour?

We have the plans to fix a broken education system, it’s time to tell that to the people on the doorsteps. We must not pander to populist calls for more restrictions on immigration.

You can visit my personal blog here

An audience of around eighty or so gathered at the British Library to listen to Dr Anthony Seldon, biographer of Tony Blair and Master of Wellington College, and Toby Young, author and Swedish-style free school activist, discuss Bright Blue’s second theme of the year, “What are we educating for?”

Young began by bemoaning the rise in vocational qualifications and the dumbing down of traditional academic rigour, leading so it would seem, to a collapse in social mobility and the entrenchment of privilege for those still allowed access to a “proper liberal education”. He spoke of a culture of indoctrination, whereby knowledge is transmitted rather critically digested, and welcomed the prospect of schools being freed up to allow the value of subjects, subject knowledge and subject specialisation to return.

Characteristically, Seldon was controversial and to the point: the great experiment of state education had failed and in such a homogenised system, where teaching to the test was allowed to dominate, we were failing our children. It was time for a new national conversation on education, a freeing up of schools, a move away from central state control, greater choice, the empowerment of teachers as professionals not technicians, and ultimately the restoration of the pursuit of knowledge, and the love of learning, at the heart of what schools are about.

The audience were not completely converted, and there were those keen to point out the progress made in the education system since 1997 brought about by increased investment: renewed and rebuilt buildings, more diverse, more market-appropriate skills being examined and tested, and improved access to higher education.

Others focused on the role of discipline, the failure of the examinations system, the potential for a de-politicisation of the education field, and with it a strengthened role for universities and employers in policy. For some, divisions between state and independent education and the extent to which money drives choice was most important; for others the definition of “success” in education and whether that can be agreed upon. One audience member simply asked the panellists to define education in a single sentence.

But overall, the tenor of the debate was positive, constructive and engaged, with broad agreement on the crucial role that schooling plays in creating opportunity and with that the potential for overcoming inherited inequality. “Would either of the front benches have the balls – forgiving the pun – to do something about improving education after the general election?” Yes, the speakers agreed, Michael Gove would.

James Marshall is part of Bright Blue, committed to promoting a fairer, more socially just Britain in the next Parliament and beyond.

You can also watch some of the discussion:

Anthony Seldon at Bright Blue

Toby Young at Bright Blue