Todmorden and Calder High Schools — House of Commons, 2015-03-09
Topic: Education
Craig Whittaker (Conservative, Centre-right): My predecessor, the Labour MP for Calder Valley, tried in vain for 13 years to convince her Government to rebuild both Calder and Todmorden high schools. The two schools have been at the top of the local authority priority list for many years, nay for decades. The problem with the previous Labour Government’s Building Schools for the Future programme was that these schools never hit the criteria to be rebuilt and without a change in the criteria they would never have been rebuilt. The two criteria of the Building Schools for the Future programme were deprivation and underachievement, but neither school was considered by the then Labour Government to be in an area of deprivation and both overachieved according to the criteria set by that same Government. It was therefore inevitable that my predecessor would fail in her attempt to get them both rebuilt under that programme Since becoming the MP for Calder Valley nearly five years ago, as well as for the three years before that, I have had a constant stream of people visit the schools, including the previous Secretary of State for Education, my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove); the previous Minister responsible for children and families, my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton); the Minister responsible for school reform, my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb); the Prime Minister’s office; the director of capital at the Education Funding Agency; the director of finance and commercial at the Department for Education; the chief executive of the EFA; and a plethora of people from the funding agency. Every one has either pledged money or agreed that something needs to be done about these schools The problems at the two schools have been extensive, with gas leaks, electricity substations replaced, sewer collapses, banisters on stairwells too low for health and safety, heating systems that are so old that at one end of the building it is like a sauna and the other end it is like a freezer, asbestos, prefabricated buildings that are a couple of decades past their usable life, mould, water retention behind rendered walls, crumbling windows and crumbling windowsills, as well as the fact that both schools battle the blight of flat roofs that need constant repairs and leak like sieves. Those are just a few of the issues At Todmorden high school, the local authority has allocated an additional £250,000 per annum just for unexpected repairs. At Calder high school, when they built the Ted Hughes theatre not too many years ago in memory of our locally born national poet laureate they found that the part of the building on which they were building the theatre had no foundations at all Both schools are a mess. The fact that their teachers teach and pupils learn to their full potential is testament to the excellent heads, their management teams, excellent teachers and superb pupils. Calder high school was built in 1935 but did not open until after the war, in 1950. It was built for 350 students, but today it caters for 1,500 students and staff. It was also our country’s first comprehensive school, and with the exception of the separate sixth-form building, built over a decade ago, the building is mainly in its original form—all flat-roofed. Todmorden high school is a specialist high school for visual arts, but trust me, nothing at all about the buildings can be considered visual art. It was built in 1958, it too is all flat-roofed, and it leaks like a sieve. The Pennine wind howls through the windows, which constantly rattle, and the extortionate energy bills add to the global warming issue, rather than keeping the young people in the building warm Imagine the excitement, then, when it was announced that instead of the criteria used for Building Schools for the Future, there would be new criteria around dilapidation and places. Finally, after nearly two decades, these two schools were on a level playing field with others, and everybody assured me that justice would be served. Every school in the UK was to be surveyed, and finally, after the unfairness of Building Schools for the Future, both Todmorden and Calder high schools would be in with a real chance of getting the money, not only because they had been promised it by the Prime Minister, no less, and the Secretary of State for Education, but because the process for getting the money was finally to be fair In this Parliament, there have been only two lots of announcements of funding under the Priority School Building programme: PSBP 1 and, more recently, PSBP 2. Both schools narrowly missed out under PSBP 1; both, after the applications were ranked, came in the early 300s. The Government announced moneys to rebuild the first 261 schools. On that basis, it seemed a sure bet that they would be in the next round. PSBP 2, however, was done on a block-by-block basis, so schools applied to have blocks rebuilt, rather than the whole school. This time, because the Government used the surveys that had been done for prioritising schools, funding for 467 blocks was announced. This time, Calder high was the school with the lower block score, at around 1,700, and Todmorden, which everybody knows locally as being the most dilapidated of the two, scored 2,638, which is absolute nonsense I asked the Minister for Schools only last week about the property data surveys and why he would not publish the rankings of schools. My right hon. Friend replied: "we have no plans to publish a ranking list of surveyed schools, which could be misleading without taking into account other information supplied by schools and local authorities with their PSBP 2 bids."—[Official Report, 2 March 2015; Vol. 593, c. 661.] If the DFE is taking into account other information supplied by schools and local authorities, why did we spend millions of pounds on property surveys? Why did the Department not use the statement of priorities, which every local authority uses as a working document, and uses to allocate maintenance spend? That could have saved the Department millions of pounds by preventing the carrying out of additional surveys—surveys that do not appear to be a true reflection of the real state of dilapidation. In fact, it was only a decade ago that it ceased to be a requirement for local authorities to submit those statements of priorities to central Government. I accept that not every local authority will now be using the same format. However, as it is down to individual local authorities to allocate maintenance spend priorities, they will have some form of working document that they use to allocate funds. If the survey is not the only basis, in the interests of openness and transparency why will the Minister not let everyone know what other things are taken into account? We know locally that the surveys do not reflect the reality on the ground. If they did, Todmorden high school would be ranked as a higher priority than Calder high school. It is not After reviewing the survey data following the decision about phase 2 of the Priority School Building programme, I raised concerns about how robust the surveys were, in particular for Todmorden high school. After what seemed like a whirlwind tour of all and anyone who would listen, many of them agreed to my request for a second look to be taken at the surveys, particularly that of Todmorden high school. The director, finance and commercial, at the Department for Education and the chief executive of the Education Funding Agency have said they would look again at the surveys. The Prime Minister’s office has said that it would ask for a re-survey. The Secretary of State has said that she will ask for a re-survey. Even the surveyors have said they will do another survey The problem appears to be that the Minister seems to be blocking this. May I ask the Minister why he is blocking attempts to have at least Todmorden high school re-surveyed or the survey re-examined? Similarly, I am told that, even if we did manage to have Todmorden re-surveyed and it was correct, the Minister would not allow it to be added to the list anyway, despite there being contingency within the list. May I ask the Minister if this is true and, if he is blocking any other school being added to the list, why Finally, the Prime Minister promised money for Todmorden high school and the previous Secretary of State for Education promised money. Every person whom I have dragged around the schools over the years agrees that the schools need to be rebuilt, the 2,500 students and teachers at Todmorden and Calder high schools all agree that these schools need rebuilding, and every parent and grandparent of those young people who live and work in those communities know that the schools need rebuilding. Many parents tell me that the schools needed rebuilding when they went to them. Why does the Minister believe that he knows better than all these people? Why will he not reconsider having the schools looked at again? Why will he not agree to put them on the PSB2 programme if he got it wrong?