Andrew Dismore

Cllr Reuben Thompstone (letters 10/7/14) is trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes concerning class sizes in infant schools. The Department for Education figures confirm the numbers I previously published, that 1,343 children are in larger sized classes over 30. I suspect his number reflects the fact that so many of Barnet’s schools have been forced out of the Local Education Authority system  into the Conservative’s  mishmash of academies and free schools and the like, so the Council can wash their hands of them- and so he only counts the few that remain, rather than all the schools in the borough.

Class sizes have gone up since Conservative Education Secretary Michael Gove removed the maximum class size rule introduced by the last Labour Government.

As for extra places and investment in schools, Cllr Thompstone  conveniently   overlooks the fact that much of the major  investment in our schools was through the  resources I secured when I was  Hendon’s MP from the  then Labour Government, for example in Deansbrook, Hasmonean and St Vincent’s.

The rapidly coming challenge  is for secondary school places: if the Conservatives had not abolished Labour’s “Building Schools for the Future” programme when they took power in 2010, we would be in a much better place than now, to meet this looming issue.

Andrew Dismore

Labour  parliamentary candidate for Hendon

79 the Burroughs

NW4 4AX