Liberal Democrats' Broken Schools Promises

Now that Sarah Teather is settling into ministerial office, perhaps it would be a good idea for her to clarify her position on academy schools.

The official Liberal Democrat position during the election campaign appeared to be in favour of greater local authority control. Ms Teather was herself quoted describing the Tories' "free schools" policy as a "shambles, unless you give local authorities the power to plan and unless you make sure that there is money available, it is just a gimmick."

This is important for us in Brent, because the Tories "free schools" policy has to be paid for, and one of the rumoured sources of funding would be through cutbacks in the Building Schools for the Future programme. After years of frustration, Brent was recently awarded more than eighty million pounds under BSF. That was going to pay for the rebuilding of Copland School (and anyone who looks at that building can see how much rebuilding is needed), Alperton Community School and Kensal Green's own Cardinal Hinsley School.

Whereas people are understandably mainly worried about the cutbacks to BSF because of the effect on childrens' education, it also has an important environmental implication. New school buildings would be an important part of preventing carbon emissions. Schools are one of the fastest growing sectors for growing carbon emissions in Brent thanks to our rising pupil numbers and the far greater use of IT in recent years.