Balls: A black day for our country’s schools
Shadow education secretary Ed Balls comments on the winding-down of the Building Schools for the Future programme:
“Today is a black day for our country’s schools.
“It’s a damning indictment of this new Tory-Liberal coalition’s priorities and it’s a shameful statement from this new secretary of state who will forever go down in history as the man who snatched free school millions from half a million poorer pupils and who has now in one stroke axed hundreds of schools from communities across the length and breadth of our country.
“This is a hammer blow for hundreds of thousands of pupils, teachers and parents who will now not get the schools they were promised.
“750 schools which have not yet signed their contracts will not get their new school buildings.
“How much will be spent on legal costs in freezing existing BSF contracts and how much will the private sector lose as a result of abandoned building projects?
“Today we have seen another attack on jobs, on opportunities, and on the life-chances of children across our country… we will fight this assault.”
