Labour MP and former education minister Trevor Mallard has suggested that the school system might be spending too effort on working with the bottom fifth of students at the expense of “the most talented kids”.

Giving a lecture in Wellington on Tuesday this week, Mallard noted efforts to make sure the school system responds better to – and is shaped by the needs of – Maori and Pasifika students.

But, he added: “I’m not certain that working with the bottom fifth, who are disproportionately Maori and Pasifika, is as important as working with the top fifth of Maori and Pasifika to make sure they achieve their potential.

“One of the anxieties I have is that at the end of my time [as education minister], and since, we have had a disproportionate focus on the bottom end, and we are missing out on ensuring some of the most talented kids, Maori, Pasifika and Pakeha, are achieving their potential. We are losing just about as much with them not achieving their potential [as we do at the bottom].”

The Herald has an opinion piece from Auckland Council’s chief economist, Geoff Cooper, about inequality and why education offers the best route to tackling it.

Now, it’s great to see an economist, and one working for an increasingly influential body, talking about income gaps.

But, just like the Treasury, he’s arguing for a very limited – and, I think, flawed – view of what inequality is and how it can be reduced.

He rightly identifies that higher skills are needed to get people into better jobs and help the economy hum along smoothly. In the upcoming book that I’ve edited, Inequality: a New Zealand Crisis, we have two chapters on education and improving skills training.

But Cooper and others tend to stop there. Only things like education, they argue, can reduce inequality while imposing no overall cost on the economy; other measures are too redistributive, too costly, too old-school.

But I think they’re wrong in a number of crucial ways.

First, education doesn’t explain that much about inequality. It’s very often a story of the top 1% pulling away from the rest, and the top 1% aren’t that much better educated than anyone else. In any case, New Zealand has had the western world’s largest increase in inequality, but our ‘degree premium’ – the extra income you get for being educated – is one of the lowest, so that can’t be the explanation.

Second, increasing educational levels does nothing for people in low-skilled jobs who work incredibly hard but don’t earn enough to get by. Cleaners, for instance, will be left to struggle on $14.10 an hour, regardless of investment in skills, so an emphasis on education alone is an argument for leaving those people in desperate circumstances.

Third, and most important, Cooper and others are wrong to think that other pro-equality measures will harm the economy. Ideas like wage-led growth makes the obvious point that if you pay people better, as long as other structures are set up properly, then people work harder – because they feel more valued – and so you generate more income.

There is no good evidence linking higher pay for the general workforce with lower economic growth.

So, arguments like Cooper’s are a good start – but far from enough.

In one of life’s great ironies, it’s just come to my attention that Talent 2, the company behind Novopay, was the sponsor last year of an award for ‘public sector communications’.

The award itself was well-deserved: it went to the Department of Corrections for making prisons smokefree and the way they got staff and inmates on board. But how ironic that Novopay, which has barely fronted to the media – quite on top of producing a disastrous bit of software – should be sponsoring the award.

As the Institute of Public Administration awards website puts it: “The Talent 2 Award for Excellence in Public Sector Communications recognises the design and delivery of innovative public sector communications strategies that have significantly increased public awareness of a government objective. This may be a public information campaign, a public engagement strategy, or the communication of a specific initiative, change of policy, legislation or regulation, and may be in a variety of mediums.”

Well, Talent 2 have certainly increased public awareness of the importance of getting teachers paid in time, if not in the way the award envisaged.

In one of last year’s editions of the journal Public Sector, Talent 2’s general manager, Peter de Boer, says, “We look forward to some equally exciting nominations next year.”

Maybe they could nominate themselves?

Another day, another study showing how an unfair tax system is helping widen the gap between the rich and the rest. It’s a US study this time, which finds that the biggest reason for widening wealth gaps 1991-2006 is the capital gains and dividends going to the top 1%.

These kind of windfalls are taxed at only 20% or so, whereas Americans who get their income from salaries can be paying 39%. It’s strikingly unfair, and has been for a long time.

Of course in New Zealand, as a rule you don’t pay tax on capital gains at all, so our system is even more extraordinarily unfair. It also means that whatever figures we have for wealth gains by the top 1% will be massively understated, since we don’t collect data on their capital gains.

The study’s also interesting as it’s another rebuttal to the idea that widening income gaps are caused by things beyond our control: impersonal, global forces like free trade, or the way that technology makes some jobs redundant and others more valuable, or the increasing premium for education.

This study builds on a lot of recent work showing that that’s not so. Take the education story – the idea that inequality widens because people with degrees earn more. It’s a seductive theory, because fixing it sounds so easy, relatively speaking. Just get more people to get degrees: job done.

But if in fact the main problem – as it clearly is in the US, at least – is the profits going to the top 1%, education is not the problem (or the answer). The top 1% are not better educated than the rest of the top third, say, of your average country. This is not about ‘returns to education’, as people like to call it.

Instead, it’s about really difficult but political – not impersonal – choices, about how the tax system treats different classes of people differently. And that’s what needs to be solved.

Could money be saved by turning empty office blocks, and even old Woolworths shops, into schools?

Bristol Cathedral choir school’s principal, Neil Blundell, is striding along the corridor of the school’s newest building, the Parsonage, when he spots a pupil leaning against the wall, shirt-tails peeping out from beneath his sweater. “Would you like to tuck that shirt in?” he asks firmly, adding: “And don’t lean on that wall – it’s only been up for eight weeks.”

The wall is indeed only eight weeks old – because the Parsonage was until this year a completely open-plan building. It was, in fact, an office block. When the choir school moved from the independent sector to become an academy last year, it had to find room for an anticipated 300 more pupils. Because it sits on a cramped site littered with listed buildings – including the cathedral itself – a huge new edifice was out of the question, Blundell says.

Fortunately, there was an office block lying empty in one corner of the site. The block had been built for letting, as an investment, but no tenant had been found. In under four months – and for just £1.3m, against £25m for a new school – it was converted into a home for the computing, maths and foreign language departments.

From the outside, its pale cream knobbly concrete walls and grey slate roofs are reminders of its immediate past. Inside, the impression of still being in an office – children in uniform aside – is reinforced. Classrooms that could be meeting rooms open off white corridors; the ceilings are rather low; and there is little natural light.

The building has its problems. As an open-plan office, it was designed for workers evenly spread across each floor; the result is that the classrooms often overheat when pupils pack in for lessons. Because the building is next to a major road, the external windows don’t open, and the relatively low ceilings leave no room to install further ventilation. As he pauses to look into a classroom, Blundell is told by one teacher that her room suffers from “really, really horrible” humidity.

However, he insists, taking over an open-plan building gave the school tremendous flexibility, and ventilation problems can be sorted out, just as the school dealt with the lack of light in classrooms – which have few windows – by painting everything in pale colours.

Blundell claims to have had only positive comments from parents. As for the pupils, they seem happy enough. “It’s very smart, more modern,” says Sam, a pupil in year 10, who seems far more interested in the new computers than the decor. “It doesn’t feel like an office block now,” he adds.

Although a new building “is always going to be better”, Blundell says, “for this school, it was the right thing to do. I’m delighted with it. I don’t think we could have got a better solution.”

It’s an idea that could become widespread. The Conservatives have already made it clear that, should they win power next year, schools will have to do more with less, swapping new buildings for converting old offices, church halls and municipal buildings.

Experts think it can be done: refurbishment and remodelling “already play a major part” in school building programmes, says Ty Goddard, the head of the British Council for School Environments. In future, “imagination and wise thinking” will be needed to make the most of what’s there already, he adds.

In the US, schools are created from offices, supermarkets and, in a distinctively American touch, shopping malls. The Tories also point to Sweden, where the much-hyped free schools movement relies on companies starting up schools without any capital grants. Looking for cheap options, they will convert old military barracks, factories and even, in one case, a former observatory.

Steve Bolingbroke heads the UK operations of the company Kunskapsskolan, which runs over 30 Swedish schools in converted buildings. A year ago, he identified several sites in the south east of the UK as ripe for conversion – among them, somewhat staggeringly, London’s BT Tower, previously known as the Post Office Tower.

Kunskapsskolan’s interest was rebuffed, so it won’t happen. But, Bolingbroke insists: “A school on top of the Post Office Tower would be a great place for kids to understand the geography of London. How great [that would be] – having a lesson about the geography of London while actually looking at it.”

Others have equally ambitious schemes. Professor Stephen Heppell, of Bournemouth University, is working with Rotherham council on plans to turn the town’s disused shops into schools. This would help to regenerate run-down high streets, and could be incredibly cheap, Heppell argues. He claims businesses will lease empty buildings for nothing as long as they are maintained – because that allows them to count the shops as assets on their balance sheet, and then borrow against those assets.

Under Heppell’s plan, which the council has agreed to explore, an old Woolworths store would, for example, “make a very fine Da Vinci studio – you know, science and art [together]”.

“If there’s a change of government, and [school building] gets squeezed, this is a really interesting route for creating learning environments that are exciting – and that are value for money,” he says.

Not everyone is convinced that the conversion model works. John Bangs, head of education at the National Union of Teachers, has visited Swedish schools. “How companies make a profit is by taking over ex-public buildings, or indeed private buildings, and furnishing them to the minimum standard,” he says. “It didn’t look particularly good. It didn’t seem appropriate.”

Peter Clegg, of schools architects Feilden Clegg Bradley, says he isn’t against the idea in principle, but he doubts it will work. Britain’s archaic planning system makes changing the use of any building slow and complicated, he argues. For that reason, the Conservatives are already plotting changes to planning regulations “to make it easier to set up schools”, a spokesman says.

But there may not be enough good-quality buildings – with high ceilings and excellent day-lighting and ventilation – available for conversion, Clegg says. “If we’re looking at taking over crap buildings and turning them into schools, it isn’t going to look very good.”

Another problem with converting office blocks lies in providing playgrounds and sports fields. “Children need space outside,” says Bangs. “You need playgrounds, you need areas you can convert to sustainable activities, like farms.”

But in Sweden, Bolingbroke says, Kunskapsskolan hires out local council sports halls or uses other schools’ facilities. Meanwhile, architects say schools could build playgrounds on the rooftops of converted offices. Although the combination of teenage children, sports equipment and a multi-storey drop may seem faintly alarming, in practice it already exists.

St Mary Magdalene academy, in north London, has a playground on its roof; as will St George’s school, in Westminster, when it is finished next year. Its playground will be surrounded by a three-metre-high parapet wall and covered by a net to stop balls bouncing over. “You create quite a secure environment,” says John Wood of construction firm Bouygues, which is working on the project.

Some parents may hate the idea of converted buildings, he admits. “Parents like to be reassured with gleaming new schools and state-of-the-art facilities.” But, he adds: “All it takes is a few architects to create wonderful converted buildings. Then parents won’t mind whether the kids are in an old office, factory or warehouse.”

First published in The Guardian

Haringey council “squandered” the equivalent of 700 social workers’ salaries on private consultants while overstretched staff failed to save Baby P, the Standard can reveal.

Sharon Shoesmith’s department for children spent £23.8 million on external advisers for the borough’s school renovation programme between 2005 and 2008.

The money – four times the recommended level – would have been enough to build one new school from scratch, or fund the salaries of 740 social workers for a year.

MPs condemned the “shocking” consultancy bill, which mounted during Ms Shoesmith’s tenure. At the same time, Baby Peter was suffering months of abuse from which he eventually died, despite being on Haringey’s at-risk register.

The figures led to fresh questions over Ms Shoesmith’s management of Haringey’s children’s services department and marked another blow for Gordon Brown’s flagship Building Schools for the Future programme.

Lynne Featherstone, Liberal Democrat MP for Hornsey and Wood Green, said the consultancy bill – far higher than for other boroughs – was “shocking”.

“This looks like an unbelievable sum to be spent on consultants,” she said. “Haringey have got a lot of explaining to do as to where exactly that money has gone. It looks like they did not know what they were doing.

“We need to be sure that they haven’t simply squandered this money. We are desperately short of things like social workers and housing.

“If this happened on Sharon Shoesmith’s watch and is found to be gross incompetence with public money then we need to know what her role was,” she said.

Baby P, now known by his name, Peter Connelly, was abused and neglected at the home occupied by his mother, Tracey Connelly, 28, her boyfriend Steven Barker, 33, and Barker’s brother, Jason Owen. He was found dead in August 2007 after suffering injuries including a broken back. All three adults have been jailed over the case.

Social workers, police, doctors and health visitors saw Peter more than 60 times but failed to take him into care. The inquiry into his death found that extra money for social services on its own would not have saved him. But Haringey was told it must undergo a further investigation into whether it allocated enough resources to children’s services between 2005 and 2008.

Separate reports by Government inspectors found a shortage of social workers and “high vacancy rates” undermined child protection in the borough.

Ms Featherstone said Haringey’s consultancy bill raised questions over whether a borough council was competent enough to manage complicated building contracts worth hundreds of millions of pounds.

Official advice states that councils should expect to spend about 3 per cent of the value of their secondary school rebuilding plans on all external consultants and internal staff costs.

Haringey spent more than 11 per cent of the value of its £214 million programme on outside consultancy alone, a total of £23,817,067.91 over the four-year period.

The payments included £9.6million to architects, £687,000 on “consultancy (general)”, £5million labelled “consultant”, £812,000 on “agency staff” and £42,000 on “planning consultancy”.

The figures were released to trade magazine PPP Bulletin under freedom of information laws. They showed that Haringey’s consultancy bill was far higher than any of the 15 other London boroughs that released information.

At least £100 million pounds has been spent or earmarked for procurement costs across the 16 councils – Waltham Forest, Southwark, Westminster, Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Haringey, Lewisham, Newham, Lambeth, Islington, Barking and Dagenham,Kensington and Chelsea, Ealing, Camden, Hillingdon and Hammersmith and Fulham.

The Prime Minister has promised to rebuild or renovate every secondary school in the country at an estimated cost of £55 billion. The Building Schools for the Future (BSF) plan has been hit by delays although 87 new schools are now open with six more opening in London this month.

A Haringey council spokeswoman claimed the £23.8million figure, which the borough itself provided in a file marked “BSF consultancy costs”, was “misleading”. She said the bill was paid from the Government’s school building grant, and was not diverted from other council services.

“£18million of that figure represents the overall costs of project design and development, such as architects, quantity surveyors, project managers and other professionals involved in a large-scale building project,” she said.

“Around £6million represents external BSF programme management costs over a five-year period. This is well within the expected consultancy costs for a programme of this size. Haringey’s BSF programme has been carefully, independently audited and is on track to deliver significant school modernisation on budget.”

A spokeswoman for Partnerships for Schools, the Government agency that runs the BSF programme, said: “It is important to not get confused between government capital investment and how much local authorities spend on their costs such as on direct staffing and external advisers.

“Councils should expect to spend around 3 per cent of the total value of their BSF scheme to ensure successful delivery, but it is not for us to dictate the precise amount that each authority should spend.”

 Written with Tom Ross and first published in The London Evening Standard

The costs of planning and setting up new schools have soared by 50% under the government’s rebuilding programme, with one council paying consultants £24m before a single building had even been constructed.

The massive rises in the cost of new privately financed schools – obtained under the Freedom of Information Act – have contributed to the bill for the government’s flagship school rebuilding programme spiralling from £45bn to £55bn.

A pledge made five years ago by ministers, to be fulfilled by 2020, promised the “biggest school-building programme for generations”. The Building Schools for the Future (BSF) scheme would see the rebuilding or refurbishing of almost every secondary school in England.

However, new research reveals that authorities in the later stages of the scheme have seen costs rise by an average of 50% just to set up a school building deal. The costs include spending on outside consultants to develop building plans and draw up contracts before any deal is signed with a construction firm.

The 31 councils surveyed had originally expected to spend £122m on setting up their schemes, covering the period from advertising it in the European Union’s official journal to reaching financial close with a private consortium. However, they now anticipate spending £161m, or 32% more. Half of all councils admitted that they had already seen costs rise, with councils more than 18 months into the programme expecting to spend £36m more than the £78m they first budgeted, an increase of 46%.

Haringey council in north London spent £23.8m – the cost of a new school and nearly four times the government’s recommended amount – on consultants before any schools had been built. A spokeswoman for the council said the figure was so high because it was accounting for its costs “upfront”, while other authorities “hid” them by spreading them out over a longer period.

Critics have long claimed that BSF is too complex and imposes unnecessary delays and costs on councils. The programme began in 2004 with the aim of rebuilding half of all secondary schools, remodeling just over a third and refurbishing the rest. But just 42 of the planned 200 schools were rebuilt in the first four years of the scheme, putting it three years behind schedule.

The research by the PPP Bulletin reveals the extent of councils’ problems and raises fresh concerns over BSF. Ty Goddard, head of the British Council for School Environments, said the figures were “an important contribution to the debate about how we can sharpen up the process of investing in our schools.

“In fragile economic times, it is vital that we match this present government’s commitment to schools capital with an honesty and frankness about how the money is invested and some of the big challenges on the ground,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Partnerships for Schools, the agency in charge of BSF, said it was “looking at the issue of capacity within local government” and continued to share best practice and lessons learned.

Written with Amelia Hill and first published in The Observer