14 May 2007
Tony Blair has been travelling the country today seeing for himself how new school buildings are transforming the educational experience for youngsters.
The PM’s visits came on the day a report revealed that 1106 new schools, 27,000 new or improved classrooms and 1260 new children’s centres have been built in the last ten years.
First up on today’s tour was the Millennium Primary School in Greenwich, which opened in 2001. He was greeted by head teacher Amanda Dennison and met youngsters using the school’s breakfast club, one of 5000 across the country.
The PM admired the school’s impressive playground, saying: “It’s really good. This is a fantastic facility.”
Mr Blair, accompanied by Education Secretary Alan Johnson, then left London to head to the Northampton Academy [pictured], which specialises in sport and business enterprise and is run in partnership with the United Learning Trust.
Later the party visited pupils at Windsor High School in Halesowen, the Kilton Children’s Centre in Worksop and South Trafford College in Manchester.
Mr Blaid said it was a privilege “to see all this which came from an idea sitting in Downing Street.”
More than £30 billion of investment has meant that hundreds of thousands of pupils are now being taught in new or vastly improved facilities, says the DfeS study, published today.
Speaking on his You Tube channel, Mr Blair welcomed the report:
“What’s happened over the decade is immense. Essentially we’ve renovated the capital infrastructure of the schools in Britain, and we’re going to carry on doing it…so that we’ve got the world class, top class facilities that we need in the country.”
We’ll be holding a webchat with Alan Johnson on Thursday to discuss education.
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Image copyright: Reuters
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