"Today is a black day for our country's schools," said Ed Balls in the House of Commons yesterday, responding to Michael Gove's announcement that he was scrapping Labour's Building Schools for the Future programme. Of course, if Labour had won the election the roles would have been reversed, with the member for Morley and Outwood making a similar announcement before the summer recess. Labour's last budget anticipated a 50 per cent cut in capital spending across all departments and that surely would have included a cut in the school buildings programme. Ed Balls can huff and puff as much as he likes, but when pressed in the House of Commons last January he admitted that school capital spending wasn't ring-fenced. (To read more, click here.)
