Summary of The James Review

Sebastian James, Head of Dixons Retail, knows a thing or two about land management. As CEO of Currys & PC World, his stores occupy over 500 UK sites; if you include all 32 of James' companies the number rapidly rises. Mojammel Khakwani*, a Year 9 boy studying in East London, also knows something about land management. This week a piece of ceiling fell on his head.

In July 2010, Michael Gove announced the cancellation of Building Schools for the Future and delayed all capital spending until the release of a review of the best way to procure future school builds. If Sebastian James could efficiently run 500 electrical stores, the logic followed that he could build schools cheaper than Labour's £2,000 sq.ft average.

In the same week as Gove announced the cancellation a plumber visited Mojammel's school to fix a ceiling leak for the tenth time in 5 years. In every OFSTED report since 2001, the school was told its building was inadequate for purpose and impossible to renovate without a site for decantation. Staff and pupils patiently waited the first wave of BSF so a local site would become available. Work was due to start 3 weeks after the announcement. The news hit the school hard.

Flash-forward to April 2011 and the James Review is finally released. It is a fair document, making the following points:

• Without objective criteria for who needed a good school, some of the worst schools have been left the longest

• BSF took too long to complete projects

• Too many stakeholder voices meant projects become over-complicated

• The need for 'unique' schools meant lessons were not being learned between developments

• Schools vary in their ability to maintain a good condition of property

So far, so fair. As befits a report written by someone so experienced, the James Review recommendations are solid and, if correctly implemented, could avoid the problems of BSF.  Key recommendations include:

• Money for building projects should be centralised and held at the Department of Education

• 'Flat-pack' standardised schools will be designed, evaluated and re-interpreted at each site to save time and cost

• 1 in 5 schools will be deemed 'innovative' and allowed extra capital to test new technologies – no guidance is given on how these schools will be decided

• Stakeholders can feed into the choice and evaluation process only

• Standardised agreements for maintenance must be provided with responsibility given to a body for overseeing that schools meet these requirements

(The full recommendations list can be found in Appendix A.)

Mojammel Khakwani brushes dust from his mosque hat and begins wailing: “I'm writing a letter to Cameron about this, Miss. I'm scared learning in this building. I'm fed up of stuff falling on me and the cramped tables. This is nonsense.”

When I first started teaching Mojammel he wrote a story about how he wanted to become a Jihadi terrorist. Writing letters to the Government is a significant step forward.

The James Review has clear omissions – when exactly will we get these flat-pack schools? Who decides which school deserves 'innovation'? But if flat-pack schools will get a ceiling over Mojammel's head, if those ceilings will be functionally designed and well-maintained then that will be good enough for now.

*Name changed to protect identity