Government to increase capital spending on schools to £5.1bn by 2005

The government has announced it will spend £5.1bn on schools renewal, maintenance and repair programmes in 2005-06.

The funding boost, set out in the consultation document, "Building schools for the future", is a key element in the government's school rebuilding and renewal strategy to ensure all secondary schools in England have 21st century standard facilities within 10 to 15 years from 2005-06.

The extra investment will be delivered in larger sums with priority targeting of those schools with the poorest standards and the greatest needs. Some £2.2bn will be targeted in focused programmes on groups of schools in coherent geographical areas, not necessarily within a single local education authority (LEA).

The programme will be driven by standards focused plans drawn up locally by a partnership of local education authorities, schools, governors and the wider community.

Priority will be based on agreed criteria such as, educational standards, deprivation, condition of school buildings and readiness to deliver a step change in provision of educational services. Proposals for the prioritisation of areas for the strategic investment in 2005-06 will be invited after the close of consultation in the summer.

Local educational authorities and head teachers will still continue to receive existing capital programmes to repair and improve secondary schools. Allocations of this formulaic funding for LEAs for 2004-05 and 2005-06 will be announced in March this year.

Primary schools will also have increased investment made available.

The government is currently inviting tenders for a range of exemplar school designs which will form the basis of a new high quality designed schools building programme. The idea is to customise a number of exemplar designs to suit local needs, settings and sizes of schools.

England has 21,500 maintained schools of which 18,000 are primaries and 3,500 are secondaries. Six out of every seven schools were built over 25 years ago.

Capital investment in school buildings has risen from £683m in 1996-97 to £3bn in 2002-03, £3.8bn in 2003-04, rising to the £5.1bn figure for 2005-06.

Since 1998, almost £10bn has been allocated to school capital programmes with around 650 schools already being replaced or modernised. The private finance initiative has added a further £1bn worth of investment in over 500 schools.