SHADOW Education Secretary Tristram Hunt backed greater transparency in national decisions on school buildings funding and less emphasis on creating free schools when he visited Ilkley Grammar School.

He was invited to Ilkley by Labour's prospective parliamentary candidate for Keighley, John Grogan, to see the school's efforts to cope with increasingly cramped conditions and a maintenance backlog.

The school in Cowpasture Road was visited by Education Secretary Nicky Morgan last December but learned last month it had failed to gain a share of national Priority School Building Programme cash.

Critics claimed funding was predominately directed at schools in Conservative strongholds in the south, although the Department for Education insisted the schools selected were those most in need of work.

Ilkley Grammar was also one of those to lose a planned rebuild when the coalition Government scrapped the Building Schools for the Future Scheme in 2010.

Mr Hunt was taken on a tour of the school site, and talked to head teacher, Helen Williams, about the school's need to expand.

He said: "This is a school which clearly needs major capital investment. both in terms of the existing estate, and also the capacity issue. This is a successful school, which primary school kids will want to come to as their secondary school choice. We want to make sure it has the capacity to take in these students."

Asked how a Labour Government would find funding for the many schools in a similar position to Ilkley Grammar, which have a maintenance backlog and need to rebuild or expand premises, Mr Hunt questioned spending on free schools and the involvement of party politics in the decision-making process around building projects.

He said: "There is a challenge in terms of the schools estate. I think what we need is more transparency and openness in how these decisions are made. We've seen an awful lot of money going into Surrey and Hertfordshire, in some of the schools there, and we're not totally convinced.

"We've seen an awful lot of money spent on free schools and creating places in areas which don't need them."