The extra funding is also expected to help raise the profile of the facilities management function within schools.
Ian Barker, facilities manager at Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School in Blackburn, said the money would help promote the services of facilities management, and therefore create more and better jobs for facilities managers in the education sector.
Barker said: 'If I was a facilities manager in the public sector, I would be rubbing my hands at the prospect.'
Education and employment secretary David Blunkett has pledged the money will be spent on replacing and completely refurbishing 650 schools, and carrying out major improvements, such as new classrooms, new roofs, new science labs or heating systems, in 7,000 schools.
Some 24,000 schools will also be in line to receive substantial grants, averaging £50,000 for a secondary school, by 2003/4.
Norman Rose, director general of the Business Services Association, said: 'Some of that money will go to the local education authority for in-house projects but a lot will also find its way into public private partnership projects.'
Rose said the money would stimulate the PPP market and assist its growth, while at the same time improving the all-round quality of schools.
He said teachers were increasingly being landed with the burden of managing the school estate and that the money would allow them to concentrate on teaching instead.
'The private sector has the ability to bring experience to bear and the local authorities are well aware of this,' he said. 'Hence the large amount of PPP projects out there to run schools.'
The government decided to pump the extra £4 billion into schools based on research that shows academic performance improves with the quality of the building.
A spokesman at the Department of Health said the money would be allocated to local authorities, and that schools would have to apply for it in the normal way.
Source
The Facilities Business
