News from The Labour Party

Ed Balls: Tories should come clean on plans to cut school buildings

Ed Balls MP, Labour’s Schools Secretary, will today challenge the Conservatives to come clean on which new schools face the axe under their planned cuts to Labour’s school building programme.

It comes as the Labour government announces the allocation of over £1billion of funding for extra school places and new schools.

An additional £300m will be provided for extra primary school pupil places in local authorities across the country and 11 new local authorities are today joining the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme sharing around £800m of funding.

One in seven school building projects in these local authorities would be at risk under the Conservative plans. The Tories have also said they want to relax buildings standards so they can open new schools in rented office blocks.

Ed Balls said:

“Today’s announcement is good news for parents, teachers and pupils in local authorities across the country.

“All this would be put at risk by Conservative plans to slash the school building programme by £4.5 billion. It’s time for David Cameron to come clean to teachers, parents and pupils across the country on which new school buildings they would axe. Where are the 360 schools which will no longer be rebuilt and get the investment they’ve been waiting for?

“While the Labour government is ensuring that children have places to learn which are fit for the 21st century with state of the art classrooms, sport and music facilities, the Tories want to change planning laws so that new schools can be opened up in old office blocks or pre-fabricated buildings.

“Parents rightly want value for money from public funds, but they will be shocked to hear about these Tory plans for schools. They do not want to go back to the bad old days when school buildings were left to rot under the last Tory government – a legacy which our sustained investment in school buildings is finally consigning to the history books.”

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