NEW SCHOOLS NETWORK

That this House notes that the New Schools Network (NSN) received an initial grant from the Department for Education (DfE) of £500,000 in 2010, and that in November 2011 the Secretary of State for Education earmarked a further £1 million of taxpayers' money for the NSN to draw on, this on top of a further £746,000 being made available until March 2014; further notes that the former NSN Director Rachel Wolf commanded an annual salary in excess of £70,000 per annum before she left to join the Rupert Murdoch-backed New York free schools project and that the final salary bill rose from £46,000 in 2010 to over £280,000 in 2011; and considers that, at a time when the PCS union is staging industrial action over the planned closure of DfE offices and the Committee of Public Accounts has reported an overspend of £1 billion on setting up academies, the Secretary of State should be condemned for his profligate and deliberate waste of taxpayers' money.