Gateshead Grump

Hookergate School © Copyright Ivan Everett and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

Like everyone else in the UK I’m dreading both the direct and indirect effects of the massive spending cuts recently announced by the coalition government. So I took particularly delight in yesterday’s news that one consequence of the cuts is that my old grammar school, Hookergate, will not now close in 2013 as was planned.

Under Labour’s ‘Building Schools for the Future’ (BSF) scheme, Hookergate  School was to close completely and be replaced by an enlarged Ryton Comprehensive School built under PFI contracts on a new site, probably in the Greenside area.  But yesterday Michael Gore, the Education Secretary, announced that many of the BSF projects have been scrapped to save money, incuding:

Hookergate School - (Proposed for closure) - Stopped

and

Ryton Comprehensive School - Stopped - PFI

So happily the old place, which holds many happy memories for me, is safe for the moment.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 6th, 2010 at 15:01 and is filed under General Ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.