Last Friday, the new coalition Government announced the creation of 'Free Schools', at the same time announcing that £50m of the capital funding for them would come out of this year’s Harnessing Technology Grant for schools and local authorities.
A
further announcement by the DfE on Monday outlined an additional £50m cut to the Grant.
In total, they’ve now shaved £100,000,000 from that grant, which is half of the total amount available this year. This will result in a direct and negative impact on front line education services as essential ICT systems will be
unable to be maintained and improved.
We strongly encourage all of our member schools to write to Michael Gove, the Secretrary of State for Education,
and to your local MP, to express your concern about the cut.
With kind thanks to our colleagues at Northern Grid, you can find below letter templates to download. If you're not
sure who your local MP is, or if you want to get hold of their address details, you can find out both at
http://www.parliament.uk/about/contacting/mp:
At our ICT Conference in Bristol on Wednesday, Professor Tanya Byron also kindly offered to take your comments on the Harnessing Technology cuts to Michael Gove. If you'd like to make a comment, please e-mail it to byron@swgfl.org.uk.
Published: 07/07/2010 13:07:53