Public/Private school building.

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redbhoy

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Im very sceptical of this deal. What is in it for the private sector for them to help out with the building of schools? Surely they wont be doing it out of the goodness of their rotten hearts?
Is the decision by Mry Hanafin not to ban sweet/fizzy drink machines the start of the rot?
Does anyone agree with me when I say foods that are proven to be bad for us should be banned from schools? Mrs Hanafin thinks its up to parents to police the lunch boxes of their children. Why not get the parents of drug dealers to do policing in drug riddles nieghbourhoods? (extreme example)
Most parents dont realise that the foodstuffs they put in their kids lunches are bad for them anyway!
My two are in a schooll with a no sweets policy and I think its great.
Am i alone in thinking this way?
 
Can you post a link to information about the deal in question to clarify matters for readers such as myself who don't know what you're referring to? Thanks.
 
The Comptroller & Auditor General found that the last set of schools built via Public Private partnerships costed between 8% & 15% more than had been the case with good old-fashioned publically funded school building projects.
 
redbhoy said:
Does anyone agree with me when I say foods that are proven to be bad for us should be banned from schools? My two are in a schooll with a no sweets policy and I think its great.
Am i alone in thinking this way?
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Yes the food should be banned and no, you're not alone.

My son also goes to a school with a no sweets, crisps, fizzy drinks, nuts etc. policy and it's great. It also takes the pressure off the parents because the kids can't say 'I want X because my friend has it every day', it's a school rule and there's no deviation.

If the government doesn't have the money, inclination or whatever the reason is to supply, maintain schools, then perhaps it's a good thing that the private sector are getting involved.

I was forced to send my son to a private school as the only alternative was an over-crowded national school where he would have been 1 of 36 boys in the class and the school in question has been classified as 'deprived' by the authorities themselves.

1 in 7 Irish children leave school with literacy problems - not surprising considering the size of some of the classes, which the Government have pledged to reduce to 20 by 2007.
 
As a former muinteóir herself, Mary Hanafin should know perfectly well that you can 'health-police' your kids' lunchboxes all you like, but it'll all come to nought if there's a tuck shop in school, or the possibility of swapping that carrot cake for someone else's king-size Mars bar.


Mind you, there's a lot of other things that the Minister should know perfectly well, but seems to prefer to forget... :p
 
OK! This "Public Private Partnership" seems to be none other than the notorious Privatisation by stealth!

How it works is responsibility for the set-up is devolved to the commercial sector and funded by public priming monies. The argument is that the commercial sector is not subject to the restraints, delays bureaucracy and hamfistedness of the "public sector" and that the commercial sector "knows" how to run projects within budget etc.

Unfortunately because the PPP idea operates on dichotomising and stereotypes it is not a realistic base for health care education or for anything else (e.g. transport infrastructure). There is substantial evidence that not only do PPP's cost as much or more but institutes of education set up and run under these schemes are riddled with bias towards areas profitable to the commercial enterprise itself (e.g. producing scholars trained in areas where the commercial enterprise has deficit).

Nothing wrong with that I hear you cry! No - not if you agree with the total instrumentalisation and narrowing of the educational project and producing operatives as opposed to providing the opportunity for well-rounded individuals capable of independent thought and reasoning! John Raven did some very interesting work on education strategy in Ireland which unfortunately was not implemented (due to political contingencies beyond Raven's - or any ethical educators - control!) Sorry to hear Harney is not encountering more opposition as the Irish education system has in many ways been getting steadily more coherent (and getting an international reputation for excellence) in the last 30 years or so, compared to declining standards (introduced by such concepts as PPP) elsewhere.
 
delgirl said:
Yes the food should be banned and no, you're not alone.

My son also goes to a school with a no sweets, crisps, fizzy drinks, nuts etc. policy and it's great. It also takes the pressure off the parents because the kids can't say 'I want X because my friend has it every day', it's a school rule and there's no deviation.

If the government doesn't have the money, inclination or whatever the reason is to supply, maintain schools, then perhaps it's a good thing that the private sector are getting involved.

I was forced to send my son to a private school as the only alternative was an over-crowded national school where he would have been 1 of 36 boys in the class and the school in question has been classified as 'deprived' by the authorities themselves.

1 in 7 Irish children leave school with literacy problems - not surprising considering the size of some of the classes, which the Government have pledged to reduce to 20 by 2007.
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banning nuts??? if you are a vegiterian I always understood that nuts could be an important and healthy part of your diet???
 
Marie, While I agree that PPP's are a negation of responsibility by the public sector I don't think that they are the source of all out ills. I don't like the idea of them being used to fund school buildings but I don't see the link between them and selling coke in the tuck shop.
I do agree that food that is bad for children should not be allowed in schools. Like posters above my sons' school has a healthy lunch policy. What's that got to do with who funds the building of the school?
 
How it works is responsibility for the set-up is devolved to the commercial sector and funded by public priming monies. The argument is that the commercial sector is not subject to the restraints, delays bureaucracy and hamfistedness of the "public sector" and that the commercial sector "knows" how to run projects within budget etc.
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I don't think that this the defining feature of PPPs. Governments have always relied on the private sector for certain services. It's hardly privitisation if the government declines to set up a furniture factory staffed with public sector workers to supply filing cabinets for their offices, for example. It's more tradition than anything else that gets the outsourcing of a service or whatever branded as "privitisation".

Anyway, to get back to my point, the defining feature of PPPs is more subtle. A PPP generally involves the outsourcing of the finance aspect of a project or service as well as the provision/implementation of the same. For example, a government could invite tenders to build a school. Traditionally private companies would bid to implement the project according to the stated specification. All other things being equal, the contract is awarded to the most competative bid and the government pays the private company to build it. This is like getting quotes from a few builders to build your house. The difference with a PPP is that the government invites private companies not only to bid for constructing the school but also to provide the finance for the same. In return the government promises a future stream of income to the company.

It's not in the least bit surprising that the Comptroller found that such projects cost between 8% and 15% more. What they mean is NOT that they cost 15% more than they would have if the government hired a load of construction workers but that they ended up costing 15% more than if the government had just agreed to pay the money up front instead of effectively buying a school building using a hire-purchase arrangement. It's the same with personal finance; you are generally much better off getting a bank loan to buy a new telly or whatever than getting one on hire-purchase. PPPs provide a convenient set of smoke and mirrors for governments because the cost of the project is "off the books" even though the actual cost is higher and, in a way, it allows the current government to spend furture money now.

So I agree with your scepticism for PPPs but I suspect I've arrived at my dislike of them coming from a completely different political perspective!
 
legend99 said:
banning nuts??? if you are a vegiterian I always understood that nuts could be an important and healthy part of your diet???
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He's in his last year at Primary School and I think it has more to do with the possibility that a young child who is allergic to nuts may eat them by mistake. :)
 
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