Convener, I am pleased to be invited to speak about the PPP school building programme. This indeed is a success story for pupils and their teachers in the two new secondary schools, six new primary schools and their associated nursery schools as well as the outstanding sports and recreational facilities for schools and their communities. Congratulations are, I think, deserved for the PPP Schools team under the leadership of Gillian Ross-Pond and David Dorward for his work on the board of Discovery Education, and of course our contractors, Robertson Construction.
The PPP schools could not have been built without the foresight and commitment of the Labour led administration of Dundee City Council. The form of funding available from the Scottish Government was to finance school building through a Public, Private Partnership (PPP). Had we listened to the carping of the then Opposition SNP Councillors in Dundee, no progress would have been made and these nursery, primary and secondary schools and fine new sports and recreational facilities would not have been built. If you live in a community in Dundee not benefiting from this programme, you may well be wondering what plans are in place for your local schools and what lies beyond the Labour led Administration's plans for five new Primary schools in Whitfield, Lochee-Charleston and the West End as well as the new Kingspark School.
So while celebrating success of one programme and our Administration's legacy of new school building and school refurbishment in the city, its difficult to identify the SNP school building legacy apart from Harris Academy. I hope for the sake of children in our city being educated in unimproved schools that your administration will indeed conjure up a school building programme, 'to match Labour's PPP programme brick for brick'.
