Some 200 demonstrators descended on parliament on Monday to protest against the government's plan to scrap a 55 billion pound school-building programme, according to Reuters. Chanting "London's schools are falling down" and holding clouds of white balloons, teachers, uniformed pupils and union members marched through the streets towards the House of Commons. The demonstration aimed to persuade ministers to reconsider plans to shelve 735 school construction projects. Shadow Education Minister Ed Balls, who addressed the rally, said the "deeply unfair" spending cuts did not make economic sense. "It's the wrong thing to cut this investment now", Balls told Reuters. "It's bad for jobs, but I think for our children's future, it's doubly bad". Kadeen Thomas, a 15-year-old pupil at Charles Edward Brooke School, in Camberwell, south London was among the protesters. "Our school's a very run-down old Victorian building and there's not really enough room for us," she told Reuters. "We really needed the money to make more space", she added from under a "Save our Schools" banner. Education Secretary Michael Gove announced plans to axe the previous Labour government's "Building Schools for the Future" (BSF) scheme two weeks ago. The programme to rebuild all 3,500 English state secondary schools by 2023 had been hit by "massive overspends, tragic delays, botched construction projects and needless bureaucracy", Gove told the Commons. The Education Secretary later came under fire from MPs and union leaders when it emerged that the initial list of 715 cancelled projects was riddled with errors. The mistakes meant some schools believed their projects were safe when they were destined for the axe. The protest, organised by the NASUWT teaching union, came on the same day that the new Academies Bill was being debated in the Commons. The bill would allow top schools to apply for `academy status', granting them independence from local authorities and greater control over their curriculum. Unions worry that this bill will allow already successful schools to prosper, while those that are struggling will lose their badly needed BSF construction funding.
