DEAR EDITOR -- The front page headline '£60m jackpot for schools' is good news. At last there is the prospect of getting rid of those temporary classrooms dotted around the school grounds and perched on piles of bricks. A hope of removing those narrow, dingy corridors and scruffy changing rooms.

£60m is an awful lot of money!

However, before I get too euphoric about it, what are the implications of private finance initiative (PFI) funding for both the schools and for the Bromsgrove community in general?

The £60m will come from a consortium of private companies who will borrow it on the open market. Unlike the businesses who built many of the original Bromsgrove schools in Victorian times, their motive is profit, not philanthrophy. The bigger the scheme, the more profit for the businesses.

This is why they will want to see a complete rebuild of schools rather than part build or refurbishment, whether justified by the age or fitness for purpose of current buildings or not.

There are many questions to be answered. Do we want to see the wholesale razing to the ground of late Victorian school buildings? Is the sense of history which these buildings give to many of the children who use them every day an unimportant frippery in their education?

Once built, the new buildings will remain the property of the business consortium, not of the school nor the LEA. The £60m and much more, will be paid back in rent over the next 25 or 30 years.

Further profit to the business consortium will come from their control of contracts for services to the schools, which will erode the present powers of Headteachers and their governors.

So why can't the government simply provide the LEA with a straightforward loan as in the past - cheaper all round? Is it a subterfuge by the government to reduce the public sector borrowing requirement so that the finances are presented in a better light? Or is it just one more step down the road towards the privatisation of public services?

Ann Holmes,

Rockhill,

Bromsgrove.