Jim Cunningham
Main Page: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)Department Debates - View all Jim Cunningham's debates with the Department for Education
(10 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberUrgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
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So far, some 83,000 places have been created, and as I pointed out earlier, these schools are overwhelmingly over-subscribed.
In 2010, the Secretary of State cut Coventry’s schools programme. How much of that programme has now been reinstated?
It is important to bear in mind that the Building Schools for the Future programme was not the most effective way of allocating resources to local authority schools. We have increased provision for additional school places in Coventry, compared with the last Government: they spent £25 million and we are spending £41 million. Coventry is also the area that has benefited fastest from our new Priority School Building programme. Whitmore Park primary school was one of the first to open, just a couple of weeks ago, and there are other schools in Coventry in desperate need of maintenance money which we are now helping at a lower cost and faster than under Building Schools for the Future.