Updates!

So apparantly it has been all go in west Auckland of late. We very kindly recieved two updates in the mail in regards to two posts I made.

The first was in regards to the Hobsonville Point development and their plans to build a new primary and secondary school at the Point. Not all that exciting really, new schools get built all the time right?

except . . .

these will be the first schools in New Zealand built under PPP or a public-private partnership (depending on, ofcourse, the putting foreward of satisfactory bids). As outlined on the press release kindly delivered to my letterbox, a school PPP would basically mean that the private sector would esentially be responsible over a 25yr period, for the school including the design, building, maintenance and finance. The education side of things would stay in the realm of the board of trustees.

New Zealand seems to have a bit of a history of being quite wary of PPPs (especially of the infrastructure variety), although they are used fairly regularly overseas.

There are naturally some pros and cons to PPPs
pros
- project risk (such as design and construction risks) are are shifted to the private sector
- potential for better value for money
- the public sector can focus fully on students and their learning
- potential for better service provision

cons
- public perception regarding the loss of a 'public asset' for a long period of time
- need to be fitted into a some form of long-term plan (this is really only a con if it isnt properly intergrated into such plans)
- conflict of interests
- negative effects on the purpose of educational institutions

As I mentioned above, New Zealanders certainly tend to be hesitant about PPPs. Personally I think that it is a good approach to take. Any business deal should be approached with caution and the Government needs to make sure that the limits of control of the private sector a clearly set to ensure no cross-over into the education side of things.

Below is a fitting cartoon I found online, just as a little something extra to think about!
I will leave it there for the moment and put the other update in a new post since this one went a bit longer than what I was expecting.