Carlotte Leslie and Michael Gove MP at Elmlea Jr School

Charlotte Leslie took Michael Gove MP, the Shadow Secretary of State for Children Schools and Families, to visit Elmlea Junior School and to see the fantastic work they do there.

It was also an opportunity for parents at Elmlea School and across the area to express their concerns about the Council’s decision not to give children from the North West of the city a greater chance of going to the new Redland Green Secondary School.

Michael Gove MP and Charlotte Leslie took questions from parents, and discussed Conservatives’ plans to allow groups of parents, such as those at Elmlea, to set up a new school if they wished, and to get other education providers invovled.

Charlotte said:

” There has been a historic lack of strategic direction coming from the council house on education, and it is children and parents who are paying the price. It is time the Council stopped blaming parents’ choice of school for the state of education in the city, and started thinking strategically about how to do something about it. Their decision not to change the catchment area of Redland Green School is short-sighted and disappointing.

I am delighted that Henbury School is now making improvements, and that Portway School is to become an academy – but the best way to help these schools flourish is to make sure that Bristol children, and the funding that they carry with them, stay in Bristol schools. Bristol loses a greater proportion of its children to other authorities than any other local authority in the country, outside the London boroughs. The Council had a chance to improve things, but has once again failed.

I am going to keep up the pressure to provide these parents with the school they have been wanting for so long. “