Bradford MP, David Ward, will be asking parents and guardians across primary and secondary schools in his Bradford East constituency about concerns they may have on schools places and the quality of education across Bradford.
From Monday 2nd February, David Ward and his Team will be talking to parents at school gates across his Bradford East constituency to get a better idea of concerns that they may have regarding pressures on school places in the City and the quality of education in our primary and secondary schools.
Recent reports from Bradford Council have suggested that there will be more than 500 children across Bradford that will not have a secondary school place when they start in year seven in 2019. This is despite the Government providing £69m from 2011-2015 to Bradford for more school places, compared to only £27m provided by the previous Labour Government.
The projected shortfall in 2019 appears to not include extra school places that will need to be provided caused by the extra housing that will be built on Greenfield sites.
The results from David’s current investigation into school places and education in Bradford will be presented to the Schools Minister, Rt Hon David Laws MP, at a meeting in March, where David will be urging the Government to provide further funding and support to Bradford’s schools.
Commenting David Ward MP said “The whole purpose of my current campaign is to talk to parents to get their views of what we need to do to better support Bradford’s Schools and feed this back to colleagues in the Government.
“Whilst Bradford has received a welcome slice of money from the Coalition Government to increase school places and to help underprivileged students through the pupil premium, this is simply not enough and Bradford Schools need and deserve more funding and further support going forward.
“When compared nationally, we all know that Bradford languishes near the bottom of the national schools league tables and much more needs to be done by the Council to raise educational attainment but it is the Government’s responsibility to ensure that funding is made available to provide places for all our children.
“I will be pressing the Minister on this point but also raising the issue of support for those schools that experience high levels of in-year admissions”
