Governments Freeze on New School Buildings to Affect Rochester and Strood?

With news that the latest cuts are to the rebuilding and re-vamping of many schools, the future of Brompton, Strood and the Bishop of Rochester Academies are now under review.

The Strood Academy Principal, Richard Hart, has issued the following statement on their website:

“The government have announced deep cuts to the Building Schools for the Future programme. In Medway, all three new academy projects have been categorised as ‘under review.’ Both Medway Council and the Academy Board will make strong representations for the project, which is well advanced, to go ahead as planned. We will keep staff & parents informed as decisions are made.”

Both the Bishop of Rochester and Brompton Academies will advise in due course how they may be affected, but at the moment, Education Minister Michael Gove is the only one with a lot to say:

"The Building Schools for the Future scheme has been responsible for about one third of this department's capital spending.

"But throughout its life it has been characterised by massive over spends, tragic delays, botched construction projects and needless bureaucracy."

According to the BBC, he called the scheme "dysfunctional" and "unnecessarily bureaucratic", with nine "meta stages", adding: "It is perhaps no surprise that it can take almost three years to negotiate the bureaucratic process of BSF before a single builder is engaged or brick is laid."

Do you agree with him? With an alleged price tag of £9million on one small primary school in Medway, for example, has there been some serious mismanagement with regard to financing these projects? Some African children have to run miles to a tiny shack for their education - isn’t what the children learn more important than where they learn it?