19/7/2010 - Investment in Cumbria's Schools (A letter from Leader Cllr Eddie Martin to Michael Gove MP, Secretary of State for Education : Cumbria County Council

Please see letter below and attachment as MPs today get their first chance to debate the Academies Bill:

Rt Hon Michael Gove MP
Secretary of State for Education
Sanctuary Buildings
Great Smith Street
Westminster
London
SW1P 3BT

Dear Secretary of State

I do fully understand and, indeed, support the government’s plans and responsibilities to reduce the burden of public debt and I appreciate that most sectors of public expenditure will be required to share that responsibility and the consequences. Nonetheless, following your announcement to parliament on 5 July that the Building Schools for the Future programme is to end, I must impress on you how important it is that school capital funding continues to be available to transform Cumbria’s schools.

The effect of your announcement is that £61.5m of capital expenditure to benefit schools in West Cumbria will not now be available. This is, of course, a major disappointment not just for teachers and pupils in the schools directly affected but also for their local communities.

You will be aware that communities in West Cumbria particularly suffered terribly in the floods of last November. Towns and villages across the area are only now recovering and a number of businesses have still not been able to resume trading. Many people have still not been able to return to their own homes. We saw BSF investment as contributing in a significant and material way to the regeneration of these communities, some of which demonstrate the unfortunate characteristics of deprived areas in that they are economically disadvantaged, suffer high levels of unemployment, low skilled employment, high dependency on welfare benefits, and below-average incomes.

BSF funding would enable a major investment in the transformation of teaching and learning, and new and refurbished school buildings would have provided a much greater opportunity than currently for these to provide services within and beyond the school day and that were accessible to young people, their families and the whole community through our extended schools’ programmes.

In recent weeks West Cumbria has been further traumatised twice in quick succession. Firstly by the Keswick school bus disaster in which two young people lost their lives and many were deeply scarred. Secondly, by the shootings in Whitehaven and its vicinity when thirteen people were killed. You will appreciate that the West Cumbrian communities have suffered a great deal recently. The withdrawal of BSF funding is yet another grievous blow which simply adds more pain to communities desperately trying to recover.

May I urge you to ensure that the findings of the Capital Review Group that you have established are translated quickly into a school capital investment programme to replace BSF. Our schools cannot deliver a modern curriculum that engages all pupils, including those disaffected by school, from run down buildings where little more than patch and mend funding has been available over many years.

My council places not only the reduction of financial poverty at the core of its activities but also the poverty of ambition and the poverty of opportunity. Modern, fit-for-purpose schools will help considerably in raising young people’s aspirations. I believe it is imperative for communities throughout Cumbria, but most immediately for West Cumbria, that the disappointment of not getting BSF investment is quickly replaced by the hope that investment in schools and communities will still be available but in a different form.

I also believe it is important that the local concerns and anxieties are allayed as quickly as possible. Our communities have already made it clear that they regard the modernisation of West Cumbrian schools as being at the top of the local agenda priorities, and it is an agenda item which my colleagues and I of the county council fully support.