ALMOST every winter for years we have heard of heads having to close schools because the heating has broken down.

Usually the problem is caused by ancient boilers giving up the ghost, or old-fashioned pipes freezing because they are not properly insulated.

It’s happened for years and it shouldn’t have done.

Nations like Denmark and Sweden have schools which stay warm in far colder winters than we normally experience.

But then they prepare for something they know will regularly occur rather than throw up their hands in horror when the inevitable happens.

For this among many reasons heads in Burnley must have been eagerly anticipating the new-found freedom that their new premises, constructed under the Building Schools for the Future programme, would bring.

All new electrics and heating in state-of-the-art buildings, no more problems...

Errr...no not exactly.

Martin Burgess of Shuttleworth College certainly has new heating, lighting and computers.

But he appears to have, certainly no more, and possibly a lot less control over them than he did before.

If the heating needs to be tweaked, to make life more comfortable in a part of the country where you can frequently experience several seasons in a 25-mile drive, it means contacting a call centre.

Lighting is fixed up in zones so you cannot turn off an individual classroom without also plunging a number of others into darkness and IT issues mean phoning the south of the United States.

Several calls later apparently someone in Chorley logs on to try to correct any problems remotely.

At a time when the coalition government is shouting about grassroots, local control of schools and pushing to end traditional council involvement the policy emphasis is on heads having the power and responsibility.

It’s lunacy that at the same time a head can have so little control over the sort of basic things that ensure school life runs smoothly.

The reason for this nonsense is of course that the schools were built with private sector money.

The PFI process was supposed to be a way of providing new schools and hospitals without us taxpayers having to dig deep.

But of course we will be paying for decades to come because big business doesn’t enter into public contracts out of altruism.

They want to gain the maximum profit possible for shareholders.

If that cannot be achieved in the short term then they’ll do it in the medium or long term.

The issue is why politicians agreed to such deals in the first place – and whether they now have the guts to restore sanity by enabling head teachers, for example, to adjust the heating in their own schools.

We know calls centres are the modern way but they must be part of a system that is efficient and flexible and not just a cheap option for big businesses.

And politicians must be prepared to argue with corporations that are often bigger financially than councils or government departments.