Geoffrey Robinson
Main Page: Geoffrey Robinson (Labour - Coventry North West)Department Debates - View all Geoffrey Robinson's debates with the Department for Education
(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Michael Gove
My hon. Friend presents a very passionate and well-informed case on behalf of his constituents on this occasion, as he does in every case. The truth is, sadly, that the situation we inherited meant that money did not go to the schools that were most dilapidated but to those schools that were favoured for political reasons by the last Government. For that reason, we shall ensure that any system of capital allocation in the future focuses explicitly on need.
Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)
The Secretary of State will recall the correspondence and meetings that we have had about two schools in Coventry—President Kennedy and Woodlands—neither of which benefited politically in the way he suggests. Is there anything he can tell us today, or if not, could he write to me about those two well-deserving cases about which he and his Department are now so well briefed?
Michael Gove
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman and to the right hon. Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth) and the hon. Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) for making the case for their schools. We know that there are schools in Coventry that are, frankly, in a terrible state and deserve support, and one reason I know that is that I have seen the evidence with my own eyes. What I do not have, I am afraid, is a detailed survey of the state of school buildings across the country, because such an exercise was abandoned by the last Government after 2005. For that reason, I am afraid, the Department for Education does not have adequate data about the state of our school estate. I am afraid it is the Ministers who were responsible for education under the last Government who are responsible for that terrible omission.