Education Capital Programmes (Coventry)
Debate between Bob Ainsworth and Nick Gibb(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Gibb
The capital allocation for 2011-12 for Coventry city council and its schools was announced on 13 December last year, and it was in excess of £13 million. It is now for the council to prioritise how it will spend the available funding, taking into account the building needs of its schools and its own responsibilities to fulfil its statutory duties.
Mr Ainsworth
The Minister has said that it is important for schools to maintain their buildings, even if they are in need of a rebuild. How on earth can Richard Lee school do that with a devolved capital programme of £9,000? How does a school maintain an ageing building with that size of devolved capital programme?
Mr Gibb
We took a decision about how we allocate scarce resources to schools and local authorities. It was our judgment that, because of the cut in the capital budget, it is better to allocate the bulk of the capital to local authorities for them to decide where the greatest need exists in their area, rather than to allocate more of that money down to the school level, because there are many schools that do not have the same need as Richard Lee school. It is better to divert that money to the local authority, which can allocate it to those schools, such as Richard Lee school, that are in greatest need.
I will now turn directly to the difficulties encountered by the Richard Lee primary school.