PRIVATISATION of education came a step closer with a press conference on November 12 at Westminster City Hall.
In his last act before retiring as Chair of Governors of Pimlico School, Jack Straw teamed up with the Tory Council and the property developers to announce that demolition of the school will go ahead, and that in order to make re-building the school attractive to the developers, per cent of the prime SWI site is to be handed over to them. The profits from the proposed luxury apartments alone could be bigger than the cost of rebuilding the school, and the developers will still be paid, on top of that, an annual fee for providing the new school building.
The government will be locked into a 35 year commitment to pay the developers to provide the school building. But OFSTED inspectors, so popular with New have pronounced that the existing space was "barely adequate" and is in fact below DFE guidelines.
The press conference was originally planned for the school and was only moved to City Hall at the last minute - a wise decision since hundreds of students refused to return to lessons after morning break in protest against PFI. Governors were not informed of the press conference, and several parent governors who turned up at City Hall were excluded.