Labour leader lays out party’s line of attack during visit to school affected by concrete crisis ahead of first PMQs in seven weeks
Yesterday Schools Week reported that at least 11 secondary schools in England where Raac has been confirmed had refurbishment plans scrapped when the Conservatives came to power. This morning the BBC has been leading on its own version of this story, saying at least 13 schools with Raac were affected by the cancellation of the Building Schools for the Future programme in 2010.
According to the BBC report, the 13 schools are:
Aston Manor Academy – Birmingham
Ferryhill School – County Durham
I think the nation’s parents will think this just reinforces a sense that we have got a government that frankly doesn’t care, and hasn’t cared about education for many years.
I actually remember visiting a school in a pretty deprived part of Suffolk, which was on the Building Schools for the Future list on the day that Michael Gove gleefully announced that the programme was being pulled.
There were all kinds of flaws with that programme: it was expensive and it was overambitious, but it was saying something important, that the nation’s schools needed to be refurbished.
The BBC analysis this morning … shows that a number of schools affected today were on the list for Building Schools for the Future, the Labour that in 2010 this government cut.
Then you add to that in 2021 a list of schools that needed work done was put before the prime minister when he was then chancellor, and he refused to allow the funding to go forward.
I think the least that we’re entitled to is to know what risks were pointed out to him in 2021 when the prime minister took those decisions, and an answer for him as to why he didn’t allow that funding to go forward.
I think that many people across the country are getting pretty weary of a government that’s now been in power for 13 years saying in answer to any question about their own failure, ‘It’s not our fault, we couldn’t have done anything.’ Are they seriously saying to the country that in 13 years they couldn’t have done anything about their failures?
These are choices. [Sunak] didn’t say, ‘Well, I can’t do that in relation to champagne’. He took a choice to cut the [duty] rate in relation to champagne and not to sign off the necessary funding for school.
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