Coun Steven Leigh: Education, education, education

With 1,927 new homes planned for Rastrick alone, the 234 surplus places projected in the Council’s Report will be completely wiped out leaving a net shortfall of over 500 additional primary school places across Rastrick and Brighouse. Photo: StockAdobe

Pioneering reforms in our society are most enduring when they secure bipartisan support across generations with successive governments building upon the reforms rather than dismantling the vital progress – education is one such example.

Coun Steven Leigh writes: Under Tony Blair’s government, education reforms focused on increasing choice for parents, encouraging competition amongst schools, raising standards, and expanding access to higher education. The subsequent David Cameron coalition government built on these foundations by increasing academic rigour, further expanding competition and academies, and introducing innovative teaching methods.

The result has been a significant improvement in educational standards in England. We are now ranked 11th in Maths, 13th in Reading, and 13th in Science in global league tables of over 100 countries. However, the Labour government plans to backtrack on the freedoms regarding recruitment and curriculum decisions that are crucial to the success of academies.

The case studies from Wales and Scotland, where Michael Gove’s education reforms were resisted, reveal a stark difference compared to the success evidenced in England. Hence, it is easy to conclude that any changes imposed on academies to limit these freedoms will be a disaster, especially considering that we are already dealing with the fallout from the imposition of VAT on private education. Many children are now moving to state schools from private education, meaning that the government is not raising the tax revenues as expected, and is now having to fund over 40,000 extra state school places (IFS data).

In Calderdale, residents should hold their local MPs to account for these failures. During the general election, the Calder Valley Labour candidate and now MP, pledged to ‘invest in our education system to ensure all children have the best opportunities to succeed’. Yet, he has supported these damaging policies.

Local residents now need to be aware that Labour-run Calderdale Council has decided to inflict further educational problems locally because they have cut funding for two new primary schools that were planned in Rastrick and Brighouse to meet the demand from the 3,000 new homes to be built in the area under Labour’s Local Plan.

The justification for the cuts is based on a 2023 report from the Council’s Children and Young People’s Directorate that advises there is a surplus of 234 primary school places but this analysis explicitly excludes the anticipated increase in demand for school places from the planned homes, which project a need for 750 new school places according to the Department for Education guidelines.

Therefore, with 1,927 new homes planned for Rastrick alone, the 234 surplus places projected in the Council’s report will be completely wiped out leaving a net shortfall of over 500 additional primary school places across Rastrick and Brighouse.

We have urged the cabinet to reconsider this cut, but they refuse to do so, and the Calder Valley MP has been silent on the issue. Residents of Calderdale deserve better than this – especially our children.