Private cash funds £20m school move

Private cash funds £20m school move

Apr 11 2003

By Education Reporter Vicky Wilks

South London Press

A SECONDARY school's move to a new building has been sealed after papers for the first Private Finance Initiative deal in Lambeth were signed.

Negotiations to make Lilian Baylis School the subject of a multi-million PFI scheme have rumbled on for three years.

But the £20.4million deal has now been completed, so the north Lambeth school in Lollard Street will move to a new building in Kennington Lane, which is due to open in January 2005.

PFI deals see private companies own and operate public buildings for a set period of time.

The Government has encouraged them as a way of bringing extra money into cash-strapped hospitals and, increasingly, schools.

In Lambeth, the private company - FocusEducation - will maintain the new school for 25 years.

Lambeth then has to make regular payments to FocusEducation throughout the contract.

In Lewisham, a £60million PFI contract for eight schools has just been readvertised by the council.

They are Ashmead, Childeric, Downderry, Gordonbrock and Monson primaries, Greenvale special needs school, and Crofton and Forest Hill secondaries.

In Lilian Baylis's case, the deal comes at a time when the school is on the tide of change.

Last year, it got the lowest GCSE results in south London - six per cent of students got five GCSEs between grades A* and C, compared with the Lambeth average of 40.1 per cent. But another marker on the league tables showed the school in the top five per cent countrywide in terms of the improvement made by pupils between Year 9 and Year 11.

Since 2001, the school has become oversubscribed; results have improved; attendance has improved to above the national average and it has started to offer a huge range of extras including palmtop computers for home use, Saturday school, and courses at Lambeth College and South Bank University. Next year, Lilian Baylis hopes to become a specialist technology school, sponsored by the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists.

Councillor Anthony Bottrall, executive member for education, said: "The fact that FocusEducation will manage the facilities will reduce the burden on teaching staff - freeing them to concentrate even more of their energy on continuing to raise educational standards."

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