Rachel Reeves is pledging £1.4 billion to rebuild ‘crumbling’ classrooms after the Tories let us all down yet again.

Here’s the BBC:

The government has pledged £1.4bn to meet a target of rebuilding 50 schools in England a year, so that children do not have to learn in “crumbling” classrooms.

The funding pledge comes after the BBC revealed that 23 out of more than 500 schools on the School Rebuilding Programme had been completed so far, while the Department for Education (DfE) has been missing its targets for hiring builders.

The Treasury said the funding for the next financial year was a £550m increase on spending this year, which would “ramp up” progress towards 50 rebuilds per year.

Reeves also said the government would spend £1.8bn on the expansion of government-funded childcare in the next financial year, with further details on childcare spending also expected to be set out on Wednesday.

The plan to increase that funding between this financial year and the next was set out in the 2023 spring Budget, external under the previous Conservative government.

The Treasury said it would triple spending on its rollout of free breakfast clubs for primary pupils in England, from around £11m this year to around £33m in 2025.

The government has also announced £44m to support foster carers and kinship, which is a child being raised in the care of a friend or family member who is not their parent.

We found out in September 2023 – under the last Tory government – that schools built using RAAC concrete were crumbling to pieces, creating a danger for pupils.

Then we discovered that the Tories had known about the problem since 2018 and would have had a chance to fix it in 2020, when all the schools were closed due to Covid-19 – but didn’t bother.

I’m concerned about the £1.4 billion figure, though. Back in September 2023, I wrote that “after 2020, the Department for Education was allocated £3.1bn per year to keep schools safe and operation. But the DfE had requested £4bn, with £7bn per year the “best practice” level”.

One assumes that £4 billion per year was the maintenance budget for all schools (in England, I also think, as education is a devolved responsibility) – while the new £1.4 billion figure is solely for restoring schools that have been crumbling.

Clarity on this would be welcome but I won’t hold my breath waiting for it. Government statistics people seem to struggle when it comes to explaining how their figures tally with those given in the past.

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