1. In this publication Private Finance Initiative (PFI) is used to refer to a specific form of Public Private Partnership (PPP or P3) used in the United Kingdom
2. In this publication conventional school is used to refer to school projects paid for by the public sector, through grants or borrowing, in the course of the construction phase. Such projects are often procured using design-bid-build, design-and-build or other non-project-finance based methods
3. Educational attainment is expressed as the percentage of students in a school obtaining five or more A* to C grade results in GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) exams
4. Unauthorised absence is measured as a percentage of half-days missed by students An absence is unauthorised if permission for it has not been given by the school or its representative. Unexplained and unjustified absences are also classified as unauthorised
5. A rebuilt school is one that has been reconstructed in its entirety either on the existing site or on a new site. Rebuilt schools are thus different from refurbished schools
6. A percentage point (pp.) is best understood as a single unit on a scale of 1 to 100
7. Rounding differences may occur as figures in Table 1 and Table 2 have been presented to two decimal places for ease of interpretation
The method we have used to arrive at our findings is detailed on the last pages of this report