We must invest in our schools

EARLIER this year I took up concerns of parents and teachers about the shortages of school places in Stockport and the worrying backlog of essential repairs to the fabric of some of our schools.

It’s really important that our children and their hardworking teachers work in school buildings which are fit for the twenty first century.

Many parents have written to me about the poor state of the schools their children attend.

They describe falling plaster, roofs which leak and other serious problems which need urgent building work – work which is very expensive, running into millions of pounds.

The local council can’t meet the massive bill for this backlog of school building repairs.

And school budgets are themselves very stretched, as any headteacher will tell you.

Stockport is still one of the lowest funded local authority areas in the country and we have had £42m in government cuts to the schools fabric budget since 2010.

As you would expect, I have taken this up again with the Schools Minister at the Department for Education.

The government have a very restricted programme for building new schools and are not providing the capital funding needed to repair existing schools.

Schools are being asked to carry out essential remedial work, just to keep going, when in fact the school buildings are basically beyond their ‘sell by date’.

Providing a new school would be a much better investment of the money than simply extending the life of the school by a few years.

Unfortunately the reply I’ve received from the Minister is very disappointing.

It just restates the case that it is up to the local authority to meet the repair bill out of dwindling existing budgets.

It seems the government have no plans for a new schools building programme.

Our local schools are very popular.

Parents have told me about the amazing experiences and excellent education their children receive.

Exam results demonstrate this and I think we can all feel very proud of their achievements.

But with many of our school buildings in poor condition, with a backlog of renovation or upgrading work amounting to many millions of pounds, I will continue to press the government for more investment in our schools.