THURROCK councillors were told of the millions that had been spent on the borough’s schools in the past year and the millions that will be spent in the coming months.
Education portfolio holder and Leader of the Council, Cllr John Kent was speaking at Wednesday (5 June) evening’s meeting of the cabinet.
He said: “These figures show our commitment to provide the best possible education for our young people by providing the best possible places to learn.
“We need to make sure we have enough school places for every child in the borough so we are planning on spending over £24 million over the next few months.
“We have identified around £17m from our own resources but, because we now have a detailed and up to date Pupil Places Plan programme, we should be confident the government will support our request for the remainder – our schools and our children need the investment and it would be wrong to deny them that.
“And I can assure everyone that we will not deny them. If central government will not support us, then we will borrow the money needed even if it’s the full outstanding £7½ million – we can borrow it at a cost of around £180,000 a year and nobody can say our kids aren’t worth that!”
Cllr Kent said that new classrooms had already been provided at Aveley Primary; a new nursery block was up and running at Chafford Primary; Tudor Court had a new nursery and refurbishment; and work is continuing at Manor Primary and will be complete by the new school year.
He added that Gable Hall had a purpose-built joint skills and sixth form centre; various major works had finished at Treetops – although the recent fire had caused some issues there; over £1 million was currently being spent at The Grays; and Ormiston Park would see the completion of £1½ million of works this summer.
He said that the council was looking now to provide extra classes and improvements to Bonnygate Primary, Graham James Primary, Little Thurrock Primary, Purfleet Primary, and Quarry Hill Primary – along with the prospect of a new school in west Grays.
It seems that the comrade and his party are employing the same scorched earth policy his party pursued while in government. Spend all the money in the hope that they’ll get re-elected. If they don’t, leave a sarcastic note saying the money’s all gone. What happened to the hundreds of redundancies? How can the council afford to spend £65 million on housing and another £24 million on schools. Where did the money come from? Why did he tell everyone at the budget setting process that the council was broke? One or the other has to be a lie.
All well and good throwing money at schools but unfortunately the facts speak for themselves, how often do we now read reports that another school has failed its OFSTED inspection or is slipping into special measures, it seems that no amount of money will stop this constant failure in TBC schools, the teaching standards need to be looked at along side the Senior Management Teams that are currently in place at the schools as they seem to be lack in some form of structure and discipline.
The government also do not help, and this goes for both ConDem & Labour, with their constant changing of the national curriculum, each successive Education Minister has tried and failed to fix something that was not broken in the first place.
Some parents also need to take a long hard look at themselves, education does not start and finish at the school gates, self respect and hard work is the way forward.
I’ll probably be castigated for saying this but… There are some shockingly bad teachers in our schools! Having had two kids go through the system I have had many meetings with teachers down the years. Some teachers are not bad, more are terrible. If there is any money to be spent anywhere it should go on making sure we get good teachers in the first place. Modern classrooms and modern equipment are no substitute for good teaching.
I’ll probably be castigated for saying this but…there are some shockingly bad parents in this borough,no matter how much money you throw at buildings and classrooms you still can’t make a silk purse out of a pigs ear.
rocket1, that’s true too.