Middle Schools - A Reprieve

This week saw a victory for common sense. And for the people of Bury who, against the trend county-wide, elected three County Councillors who publicly opposed to the closure of our Middle Schools. As you will read in this week's BFP, Suffolk County Council has just pulled-back its proposed Schools Organisation Review (SOR) for Bury and Stowmarket.

Quite late in the day, the penny seems to have dropped that that millions of pounds in `Building Schools for the Future’ money will probably no longer be available from central government. This money was key to the whole SOR which, if you remember, sought to do away with our Middle Schools in 2013 (creating a hotchpotch of temporary split-site secondary schools) and open a range of brand-new school buildings in the second half of the next decade .

A policy which now, like the public finances, looks pretty ruined. While we congratulate Suffolk County Council on their good sense at kicking the ball into touch for now, we believe that they need to actually go further - and boot it publicly and permanently it into the long grass. Because even Suffolk’s ruling Conservatives know in their hearts that the Building Schools for the Future money isn’t coming. Not next year or any other year.

To pretend this policy is still intact, as the Council is doing, prevents the discussion moving on on how we actually improve what we have already working well in Bury – as evidenced by excellent exam results last month.

So come on Suffolk County Council, call a spade-a-spade, and declare this ailing SOR policy dead.