Author: Nicky Phillips

Private firms have posted profits totalling tens of millions of pounds since 2012 from selling their stake in government-awarded contracts to build schools – while company directors pocketed seven-figure salaries. The guaranteed yearly rise of PFI repayment costs is heaping more pressure on schools as their budgets are tightened by the public sector squeeze. But […]

Special assemblies were held this term at Hylton Castle Primary School to celebrate the opening of their new school building. The Sunderland school was the first to open under George Osborne’s revamped PFI initiative – Private Finance 2 (PF2). Forty-six schools will be rebuilt or refurbished using £700 million of PF2 funding as part of […]

A headteacher has scrapped extra revision classes and interventions for year 11 to protect students’ mental health in the run up to this summer’s exams. John Tomsett, of Huntington School in York, has instead urged his teachers to save their energy for planning and executing “great lessons”. Mr Tomsett told Schools Week he did not […]

Schools have been urged to offer flexible working opportunities, such as “keep in touch days” and cash retainers after figures show one in four teachers who leave the classroom are women in their 30s. A set of essays on teacher recruitment and retention has been published today by thinktank Policy Exchange and the Association of […]

One of the largest buyers of equity in schools is a firm called Innisfree, based in central London. It paid £42.5 million for construction giant Balfour Beatty’s 50 per cent stake in PFI contracts of four school projects, in Birmingham, Bassetlaw, Stoke and Rotherham, in 2013. Balfour chief executive Andrew McNaughton described the firm’s £24.5 […]

School leaders are furious that local authorities and regional school commissioners (RSCs) are asking for predicted grades for this year’s primary assessments when the government is refusing to provide guidance on how to score them. Professionals say it is impossible to provide the predictions before May’s tests as pupils are sitting new tests under a […]

Schools Week can today reveal how the toxic legacy of costly PFI contracts threatens to derail the government’s promised “academies revolution”. Our three-month investigation has uncovered how cash-strapped, failing schools are seeing potentially transformative takeovers hit the buffers as academy chains baulk at taking on lengthy contracts to repay the private firms who built the […]

Every state school in England would have to pay more than £1 million each to clear the debt owed to the private firms that built new schools under PFI contracts, an analysis of Treasury figures by Schools Week has found. While schools are already struggling under the burden of hefty financial commitments, Schools Week can […]