John Penrose celebrated today as Education Secretary Michael Gove has announced that North Somerset is amongst the local authorities who will receive a significant share of a new £500million capital grant for schools. North Somerset’s share is worth £1.3million and represents a 22 per increase on its initial funding allocation for 2011-12. It comes on top of £1.8million of extra funding that had already announced in December 2010. The money will help North Somerset Council provide more primary schools places.
John said: “As someone who has long campaigned for fairer funding for our local schools, I’m delighted that our Government has recognised that we had a funding gap and that we’re finally catching up with historically better-funded areas.”
And there’s even better news: as the money isn’t ring-fenced, the council will now be able to target the funding where the need is the greatest rather than be told by Central Government how to spend it, as too often happened in the past. On top of three of our local schools becoming academies, this should allow us to continue raising our education standards and make a real difference for children living in and around Weston.”