Last week I met the Schools Minister, Lord Agnew and the National Schools Commissioner, Sir David Carter. I called the meeting to discuss the quality of school education in Nuneaton, Arley and Hartshill.

We have more ‘Good’ and ‘Outstanding’ schools in our area than a few years ago and we have some great schools doing their absolute best for local youngsters. We also, unfortunately, have some schools that are not doing the best for our children. This is not just about Ofsted ratings, it’s about the baseline of where a child is when entering a school and what progress they make as a result of their education.

I think we must all accept responsibility for how well our children do at school. It’s not just about a school and its teachers, it’s also about parents helping and supporting. We all know that where this parental help takes place children generally do better.

I have asked what more can be done to improve the schools that are not delivering for local children and I am determined to keep following this matter especially closely. Whatever a child’s background we must do all that we can to give them the best start. This is one of the ways in which we can really mobilise the lives of young people from our area, equip them to secure good careers and a decent standard of living.

We must also make sure we have enough school places and I am also pursuing this agenda with vigour.

I am expecting two new schools on the north of Nuneaton to be built in order to accommodate new development, I am also aware that there are discussions to expand the number of classes in many of our existing schools.

Due to the increase in births and new developments a very small number of youngsters were offered school places outside of Nuneaton. This is not acceptable and everything must be done to ensure new places of high quality are provided across our own area.

Education should very much be our starting point and the building block to build a vision to take our area forward.

Alongside education, we really need to focus on better local roads, better rail and other transport links. We also need to create more local jobs by providing more employment land and regenerating our town centre.

Many of these matters relate to our local Councils’ orbit of responsibilities who, as yet, have not articulated a vision for our future. Over this year, I intend to dedicate significant amount of time to creating and promoting such a vision. As a local resident myself, we need to do better and must make it happen.

I was sad to see that Cyrille Regis, the former West Brom, Coventry, Villa and Wolves player has passed away. He was a great player and I remember very fondly, watching him play for Coventry in the 1980’s and the very early Nineties, in fact as a youngster he was my favourite player. He blazed a trail for black players, at what was a very different time in history, he will be sadly missed.