Building Schools for the Future - Halton hammered

The decision of the coalition government to axe the building schools for the future programme (BSF) has had a massive impact on Halton and many other constituencies across the country. Some of the poorest areas have been hardest hit and none more so than Halton, the 30th most deprived borough in England and Wales and one of the country's smallest unitary councils.

Eleven schools in the Halton have been affected - of these 8 have had their building projects axed and three under review. Two of these are sample schools and are amalgamations with the intention of locating the schools concerned on to one site.

In the case of Wade Deacon as a sample school, if their planned expansion is rejected by the education secretary, in excess of 400 pupils would be without a school. The Grange School was to be expanded as an all-through school to take pupils from 3 years to 16 years. It would provide neighbourhood nursery provision and resource provision units for both primary and secondary pupils with speech and language communications difficulties and those pupils with Autistic Spectrum Disorder. The current buildings have significant condition issues.

Also affected are three Special Schools and two Pupil Referral Units. The decision made by Michael Gove is destroying a well thought out plan for providing all secondary pupils with state of the art facilities to learn. It will also lose the opportunity for much closer involvement with local communities by making schools and their facilities more accessible. This is essential if we are to continue the superb educational improvements we have seen in Halton in the last ten years.

The Tories' accusation that that they have to cut the programme because there is not the money to fund it is just not true and is certainly not an argument schools in Halton accept. In a response sent to shadow education secretary Ed Balls, from David Bell, the permanent secretary at the Department of Education, it made clear that the money for BSF was there.
It is difficult to convey the dismay and despair of headteachers, teachers and pupils in Halton schools over the scrapping of their new school building projects. In addition to the time and resources the LEA has put into BSF, schools have spent hundreds of hours of staff time in developing the project and their own school plans.
Importantly, the proposed plans received cross party support locally and Halton was commended by the previous government for the manner in which it approached the proposed reorganisation of the secondary school provision and the level of consultation undertaken across all stakeholders in preparation for BSF.
There is no doubt in my mind that the real reason for the axing of BSF is to pay for the Conservative's free-market schools policy. The poorest areas will suffer as a result.
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