• A NEW public property company set up by the Department for Education to purchase and develop sites to help create 500 new free schools will help the DfE become one of the country’s biggest estate and property companies.

Land speculators will be rubbing their hands with glee. The DfE has a history of paying well above market price for land and buildings, while spending on pet projects should make us all concerned about how our tax money is being spent.

In Islington we can see this in action, with the calamitous waste of £33.5m paid for the old London Met site at Highbury Barn – handing £7.8m profit to developers who sat on the investment for nine months. A £33.5m investment in a free school site that is a mere 200 metres from a secondary school recently judged “outstanding” by Ofsted. Unnecessary and not supported by the local community. If they’d actually spoken to local people they’d know this.

While the DfE continues to act with generosity to developers seeking to make a profit, it’s against a disturbing backdrop of ideological cuts imposed on schools by the government. Cuts right here in Islington, in order to provide more funding to schools that do not have the same needs and requirements our schools do.

Creation of a two-tier state education system is one thing. Channelling investment out of schools that desperately need it and into some “upper tier” of state education
– on the basis of political ideology – is shameful.

KEITH ANGUS
Governor, Highbury Fields School and Lib Dem parliamentary candidate for Islington North