Posts Tagged ‘Gove’

In the face of the BSF decision we must stand up for our schools, says Nick McDonald

30/07/2010, 02:36:11 PM

In Nottingham, we have recently started a campaign to protest against Michael Gove’s decision to cancel Labour’s Building Schools for the Future. His decision came as no surprise, but that will be of little comfort to the schools and learning centres that have fallen on the wrong side of the line.

The cancellation of BSF affects two of our schools; Top Valley School & Engineering College in the north of Nottingham and The Trinity School in the west. These two schools are special cases. They were to receive part of the £33 million funding specifically promised as an agreed fifth wave of BSF investment in Nottingham. But there are even more schools or learning centres here have had their building projects either scrapped entirely or dramatically reduced. For teachers, parents, and children of all of these schools this is clearly a devastating blow.

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Monday News Review

12/07/2010, 07:54:02 AM

Gove faces grilling

Michael Gove faces the Commons for education questions today

Ed Balls piled fresh pressure on Michael Gove, the beleaguered education secretary, by calling on him on Sunday night to answer questions over the withdrawal of funding from the schools construction programme. Mr Balls, shadow education secretary, wrote to Mr Gove demanding to know what advice he had from officials over the need to consult on last week’s decision and whether it had left the government open to legal claims. – The FT

The Liberal Democrat deputy leader, Simon Hughes, today distanced his party from education secretary Michael Gove over the contentious decision to cancel 700 school rebuilding projects. Hughes said he was not entirely comfortable with the handling of the announcement, adding it would be “a nonsense” to build the new free schools proposed by Gove using cash that could have improved existing buildings. Gove has agreed to meet Lib Dem councillors concerned by his announcement, and the issue is likely to be raised at a Liberal Democrat meeting of its MPs organised by Nick Clegg, the party’s leader and the coalition deputy prime minister.  – The Guardian

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The week Uncut

10/07/2010, 06:21:52 PM

Another week in the race is over. As the contest rolled into July, five people said the same things they said last week, to some slightly different people, and one man got ready to say lots of things about two people, which a great many more people will read.

It was the week that Burnham didn’t quit, Balls didn’t smear and Michael Gove broke the hearts of millions of children, enraged thousands of teachers, disappointed hundreds of parents, and made one man very angry indeed. 

In case you missed them, here are half a dozen of Uncut’s better-read pieces of the last week:

“It was like looking at bambi. So I shot him.” Watson on the moment he lost it with Gove

Ed Miliband’s taste in music causes an argument in the Uncut office*

Bounder doesn’t think Nick Clegg’s Your Freedom is big or clever

James Ruddick thinks the Tories are storing up glory by trashing our past

Nick Palmer argues Ken Clarke isn’t wrong, he just doesn’t mean it

John Woodcock on Ed Miliband and why he is wrong about flexible labour markets

*By office we mean Starbucks

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