During yesterday’s (11/01/10) debate on the Children, Schools and Families Bill, local MP Andrew Miller, highlighted the wide spectrum of educational improvements that have taken place in Ellesmere Port and Neston over the last few years and emphasised the need for this to continue.  Mr Miller also took the opportunity to press for resources to be allocated to allow Neston High School to redevelop its premises.

Mr Miller said:

“When I was first elected in 1992, one of the first things I looked at in respect of education in the area was the desperate need to raise the ambitions of young people.  It is critical for Parliament to focus on education and to ask whether this Bill enhances what is happening locally.

“The first major change in Ellesmere Port and Neston was the development of a series of new primary schools.  One of the best-managed private finance initiatives, it worked in partnership with all the key customers including the young people themselves.  It made a difference: that group of children felt that the school really did belong to them. The initiative, together with Sure Start, began to change the life chances of young people, and I have seen it develop.

“More recently, last September, we created a new academy, the University academy.  It is the result of a fantastic partnership between Chester University, the local diocese and two secondary schools that have been merged.  The close partnership with the university sector has resulted in new builds for both the academy and a further education college.  Even in the few months involved, it has made a number of young people ask themselves a question about university: what is this mysterious place to which very few have aspired?  It has already made a difference, and I commend it.

“The Minister for Schools and Learners, Vernon Coaker MP, also witnessed the results of a different Labour investment when he visited the Hammond School.  He saw the extraordinary talent of young people who had benefited from the specialist investment in dance and drama that had enabled state-funded pupils to get into that elite school.  All that investment has transformed the life chances of people in my constituency, who are beginning to believe that they can do better than their predecessors.
“I view the Children, Schools and Families Bill in the context of what is happening now.  The most important of the guarantees mentioned in clause 1, is the pupil ambition "for all pupils to go to schools where there is good behaviour, strong discipline, order and safety".  This must be seen in the context of a two-way trade.  Students cannot attend a school at which they expect to enjoy good behaviour around them unless they are part of it themselves.  We must work hard to ensure that a programme of that kind is enshrined in legislation as soon as possible.

“21st-century schools need investment, and I believe that unless the investment programmes, such as those that have already benefited my constituency, continue into the foreseeable future, it will not be possible for that part of the Bill to be delivered either. We need continued state investment, together with the ambitions set out in the Bill.

“This is an important Bill that builds upon the building blocks to which I have referred, and I hope that when it passes through Committee, it will emerge as a measure that helps to develop education still further.  On that basis, I support the Bill.”

Ends
12th January 2010