Primary school children playing outside on space hoppers, photo National Assembly for Wales (Creative Commons) (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)
Offshore investment firms part-own 277 Scottish state schools.
The schools are products of ‘Private Finance Initiative’ (PFI) infrastructure privatisation. “Wealth machines” was how a spokesperson for the European Services Strategy Unit think-tank described them.
Speaking to the BBC, he added: “There are an awful lot of people making very substantial sums of money out of it.” Scotland’s various PFI contracts, including the schools, are worth a collective £6 billion.
In Edinburgh, authorities had to close all 17 of these schools earlier this year. The corner-cutting of private contractors had caused construction faults. A wall fell clean off Oxgang Primary School during a storm. Luckily, no students or staff were stood there at the time.
The Socialist says: end PFI extortion. For public ownership and investment in high-quality infrastructure.
