Guardian Newspaper Praises New Milton Keynes Schools

2.22.25pm BST (GMT +0100) Mon 4th Oct 2004

An article in the Education Guardian on 28 September, entitled "Grand designs", praises the new schools opened in Milton Keynes this term by the Liberal Democrat Council.

Wendy Berliner, the Guardian's education correspondent, spent a day in Milton Keynes last month. She visited Middleton and Broughton Fields Combined Schools, which opened this term, and Shenley Brook End Secondary School, the last phase of which also opened this term. Shenley Brook End opened a year ahead of the original programme with 300 extra places.

Her article says: "By next September, Milton Keynes will have provided an extra 3,000 school places in just three years. It is a remarkable turnaround for a town which 10 years ago was deliberately building schools one or two classrooms short because it did not have enough money for the whole job. A town whose own planning authority stopped giving permission to build more temporary classrooms because school sites were so disfigured by their proliferation. A town where schools were never built before the new housing estates arrived, and parents had to chase available places.

"The blitz on providing school places is in part due to effective collaboration between the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) and Milton Keynes council, a unitary authority since it was divorced from Buckinghamshire in 1997. The Liberal Democrat leadership, which took over from Labour in May 2002, has prioritised school building and is also in the process of seeing through a change in the age of secondary transfer from 12 to 11. The new schools are built to space standards that exceed the DfES's new improved standards, and to eye-catching designs that make them a pleasure to walk into."

The full article can be read at http://www.educationguardian.co.uk/egweekly/story/0,,1313732,00.html