Teresa Murray, Labour PPC for Rochester & Strood welcomes Ed Balls, the Secretary of State of Children, Schools and Families to St Peter's School in Rochester to reaffirm her committment to improving education across Medway. Both congratulated the stirling efforts of parents, pupils and school campaigners on their efforts to save St Peter's School in Rochester. The parent-led campaign defeated Medway Conservative plans to close St Peters School.

Teresa also condemned Medway Tories for failing to apologise for the significant amount of stress caused to local parents of St Peters School. Parents who have suffered because of Medway Tory arrogance, with a school that should never have been on the closure

Labour Councillor Teresa Murray also said,

'Mr Reckless (Tory PPC, Rochester & Strood) was conspicuous by his absence throughout the campaign and only turned up for the cabinet meeting when all the hard work had been done by parents and staff with their Labour councillors.

The Tory cabinet said rightly that St Peters has good prospects and a rising roll which raises a serious question about why they put parents through the stressful process in the first place. Indeed, the same logic applies to St Johns and to Ridge Meadow and the same arguments were presented by council officers about all three schools.

I am thrilled for parents, staff and above all the children at St Peters and am full of admiration for the campaigners who have worked so hard to save St Peters. But I feel that Ridge Meadow and St Johns have been treated shamefully by the Tories and should also be celebrating success. I salute the passion, commitment and hard work of campaigners at all three schools and pledge to help them continue their fight for justice against this rotten borough Tory party.'

Labour locally are fighting for parents and families. We have longer and better paid maternity leave and paternity leave for dads. And as children get older, we are providing more financial support than ever before to help parents balance their family finances and save for their childrens future.

Parents, children, teachers and the wider community in Rochester have been pleased with the success of the parent-led campaign to save St Peters school and watching with pleasure as the places for children who want to go there fill up quickly as we always knew they would. This joy is sadly tempered by the pain and misery for communities associated with St Johns and Ridge Meadow schools who continue to fight on while Medway council persists with their pointless closures.

The ruling Tory Cabinet are astonishingly, pressing ahead yet more unpopular plans to amalgamate schools in Rochester and Strood and indeed all over our towns.In my ward parents and governors from the Delce schools are now forced to devote valuable time and resources that they want to spend on the schools to resisting the proposed amalgamation because they know it's not the best way to help children do better.As before,their efforts and professional opinions are being treated with thinly disguised contempt as the Cabinet,with no serious protest from the rest of the Tories, attempts to steam roller over their concerns in pursuit of a flawed strategy.There has been no attempt to take account of how the outcomes so far make what's left completely unworkable anyway and when challenged the Cabinet simply make the same old feeble noises of trying to blame the government for an entirely locally determined decision.