Getting our priorities right.

Oh dear, you are irritated about something aren't you?

Yep.

Go on then...

I would like to make a few points:

1) The quality of what we teach our children is more important than the quality of where we teach them. I teach in rooms that vary from the hugely spacious "could be used as the school hall in an emergency" to the pokey "just about enough room for me, three pupils and their keyboards" and from a practice room in a modern purpose built performing arts building to a hut that was probably temporary when it was put up 30 years ago. I like to think that the quality of my teaching is equal in all of them.

2) The house I live in was built in the 1960s, it's still standing and in good condition. Why are our 1960's schools in such a state? Do we really need such full scale rebuilding of so many of our schools when some basic repairs, double glazing and modern heating/insulation would solve the majority of the issues? Of course, this wouldn't have satiated our previous governments fetish for big shiny headline-grabbing new buildings would it? There are school buildings built in Victorian times that are looking better than some built in the '60s because they were better built to start with and have been looked after properly. Judging from some of the new build school buildings I have seen, I'm not entirely sure modern school buildings are being built to any better quality than the ones they are replacing.

3) Once things have been reviewed we may find these projects go ahead anyway, but not in the expensive, bureaucratic way they were previously being planned in.

4) The fact that there are teaching staff marching through London on a school day shows just how much those people actually care about teaching children. It's the school holidays next week, march then if you have to!

If we are going to be cutting the education budget then of course the school building programme should be the first to be reviewed. Teaching and Learning are the priorities in education; as obvious as that may seem it clearly needs pointing out. Buildings don't teach children!