Education Secretary Michael Gove fails to reassure over schools projects

Published: 24 June 2010
by RICHARD OSLEY

SEVERAL Camden school improvement projects are still hanging in the balance with fears growing over the Department of Education’s refusal to guarantee funding.

Even cash needed to complete the new UCL Academy in Swiss Cottage has not been guaranteed.

More than £200million of planned spending – part of Labour’s nationwide Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme – was put under review by Education Secretary Michael Gove as soon as he took office.

The uncertainty over the work has become the first source of tension between Liberal Democrats in Camden and their House of Commons colleagues who have helped form the coalition government.

Councillor John Bryant, one of the “key drivers” behind the academy project when the Lib Dems were in power in Camden, has ­written to Sarah Teather – a junior minister working under Michael Gove – appealing for support.

His letter said: “It would be deeply unwise for the new coalition government to scupper these plans because of a sudden freeze on spending on the BSF programme.”

Labour’s Hampstead and Kilburn MP Glenda Jackson has also waded into the row by asking questions about the future of the BSF schemes in the House of Commons this week. She did not draw a firm commitment from Mr Gove as she questioned him across the floor. 

He said: “We are doing everything we can to ensure that we guarantee school places for children in Camden.”

Aside from the academy project, nearly all Camden’s secondary schools were set to benefit from the BSF improvement project and teachers, parents and governors have spent hundreds of hours working out provisional plans.