Well, isn’t this interesting?
This is a story in the Express & Star about the former Frank F Harrison Engineering College, now the Mirus Academy.
It says in the article “…The school in Leamore Lane lost out in the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) funding three years ago.”
This is actually bollocks.
Frank F, as it was then, was included in the first wave of Walsall schools which were to receive roughly £100 Million over 10 years.
Full story here: http://bit.ly/1gnoYzt
The reason the school didn’t get the money to rebuild was because we had a change of government and the tory-led coalition cancelled the Building Schools for the Future programme and chose instead to allow decrepit schools to trundle on a bit while the coalition bleated about the cost of BSF.
The tories didn’t redesign BSF or improve what they said were its shortcomings, they just cancelled it.
That’s why Frank F ‘lost out on funding’.
And unlike our neighbours in Sandwell, Walsall Council didn’t do or say anything.
They just said ‘Oh well, nothing we can do about it’ and left the schools to crumble a bit more.
Sandwell, you will recall, dragged the idiot Gove to the High Court where he was found to have used a ‘dysfunctional process’ and had failed to consult councils about the cuts and, in five cases, had acted so unfairly that his action amounted to ‘an abuse of power’
(it’s all here, check it out: http://bit.ly/1oCB6kU)
So, as is often the case with E&S stories, there is a lot more to this than meets the eye.
It is good that the school is getting revamped and about time too, Walsall has some really shitty schools (buildings, not teachers or kids), but it isn’t the good news story the E&S or Walsall College, sponsors of Mirus Academy, would have us believe.
Walsall Council meekly stood back and allowed the tory-led coalition to scrap the biggest school building programme the borough would probably have ever seen.
True, it didn’t get Sandwell and their pals very far, but at least they put up a fight and it typifies Walsall’s Council’s attitude to education – apathy and inactivity.
You might want to remember this, friends, when you come to vote later this month.
mrmarjon 