Debate contribution: Schools in Mid Ulster: Procurement Process
Debate contribution by Ms Emma Sheerin on .
- MLA
- Ms Emma Sheerin
- Party at the time
- Sinn Féin
- Date
- 18 February 2025
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Adjournment
- Heading
- Schools in Mid Ulster: Procurement Process
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 4806819
Read the official Assembly record
Text
Go raibh maith agat, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle.
I appreciate the opportunity to bring the matter to the Chamber this afternoon. We are asking for a common-sense approach to our local schools. It goes without saying that the safety, well-being and health of our children, our pupils attending school and our staff working throughout our school estates are of paramount importance. I know, Minister, that you will be keenly aware of the importance of that and of the importance of accountability when it comes to the spending of public money in our schools. Notwithstanding all of that, we feel that we have to see some changes in terms of maintenance and the ability of schools to manage their budgets better.
Since I became an MLA, principals from across the North have been contacting me about maintenance issues in their school. There are schools in crisis, and we have facilities that look as though they are from the 1950s.
The Minister has visited a number of schools across the North, including Holy Family Primary School in Magherafelt, which is in my constituency. Its classrooms have blue mould on the walls, and children are suffering real-life health implications as a result. Principals have told us repeatedly that they are frustrated by the, as they see it, unnecessary bureaucracy in the system when they attempt to fix a problem in the school or make adaptations to the building. I have loads of examples of where staff have contacted me about issues that are causing concern. There are two issues, the first of which is delays. I hear about the length of time that it takes Education Authority (EA) maintenance teams to come out to schools. The second is the unnecessary procurement process, which exacerbates the first issue. A school often knows somebody in the local area, perhaps a school governor or a parent of a child at the school, who can give a quote for the work, but, because of the procurement process, the school has to go through a tender process. The work can then end up costing a lot more and taking a lot longer to do. I will now give some examples. Someone was going to put a handrail on the outside of a school in south Derry for a couple of hundred pounds — the cost of the materials — yet the job ended up costing thousands of pounds. A light fitting that was installed in a classroom unnecessarily cost hundreds of pounds. A local school needs a new front door because the old one is rotten and the pane of glass is coming out of it, but there has been no movement on that for two years now. Someone in the school family is a joiner by trade and could sort out the problem in a matter of days, but the school does not have the freedom to authorise that work. Another example is the refurbishment of a school's boiler house. It was agreed in 2021 that the work needed to be done, but no progress has yet been made, so the school is still waiting on the boiler house's refurbishment. I will give further examples. A school in my constituency's heating system broke at the end of the previous term. Multiple attempts were made to get a call-out, but the school went for days without heat or hot water, which meant that it could not provide hot school meals. When the engineer turned up to do the repairs, it took him all of an hour to sort out the problem. Once again, a local plumber could have done the work for a fraction of the price and in a fraction of the time. The procurement process is therefore causing a lot of frustration. A principal told me about an empty space behind the school that could be turned into a playground or an extra facility for the children to enjoy. The Education Authority told the school that the work would cost £15,000. The plan therefore had to be abandoned, because the school could not afford the cost out of the school budget, even though it knew a local contractor who could have done the work for buttons. One school principal contacted me about an ongoing issue with sewage. After an upgrade of its sewage system, at a cost of £111,000, there was a bad smell in a classroom a few months later. That was in December 2020. The problem was reported, and correspondence went back and forth between the school and the Education Authority. In September 2024, almost four years later, the school was told that the sewage pump had burnt out and that a new one was required. The job was completed on 7 January, but, as of 7 February, the sewage pump is not working, despite the new one having been fitted only a month previously. P2 children are again sitting in a classroom that smells of raw sewage. I have therefore heard clearly from school principals, staff and parents that they want a safe and healthy environment in which to work. The system is not sustainable or working for them. They want to see a common sense approach and some practical thinking to try to make it more efficient and cut out the unnecessary bureaucracy.
880 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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