Schools in England need £8.5bn repairs!

In an article in the Financial Times by Chris Cook, Alex Barker and Ed Hammond, they report that the backlog of repairs needed by English schools would require £8.5bn to fix. This is according to recent internal civil service estimates seen by the Financial Times. The dire condition of large parts of the £110bn school estate has become a source of panic, according to officials at the Department for Education, which accepted a 60 per cent cut to its capital budget. It has only £16bn to last the rest of the parliament. Officials estimate that half of England’s schools were constructed between the second world war and the mid-1970s. Many of these schools are asbestos-riddled, flat-roofed and a long way beyond their intended lifespans. 

It's no surprise to those of us who have been working on the front line for so many years and that is of course why the Building Schools for the Future programme and the Primary Capital programme were so important!

Chris