Schools will struggle to complete essential repairs after Tory cuts

By Andy Burnham MP / @andyburnhammp

At the Spending Review the government claimed to have found ‘more resources’ for our schools.

As with so many other broken promises to young people, this claim is shattered as the reality comes to light.

New research from the House of Commons Library reveals that school budgets for essential building repairs and computer equipment have been slashed by 80%.

The average secondary school will see its budget for building work, repairs and computers slashed by £86,000 next year.

The House of Commons Library research says for primary schools in England the figure is £26,000.

With just a fifth of their maintenance fund left, schools will struggle to complete essential repairs and keep their buildings in good working order, storing up expensive infrastructure problems down the line.

This is also the money that schools use to buy computer equipment – with these cuts Michael Gove is sending schools back to the dark ages.

We are looking at a return to the bad old days of the 1980s when children tried to learn in crumbling classrooms with equipment not up to the job.

This is despite Michael Gove’s promises, when he scrapped Building Schools for the Future, that schools would still have money for essential repairs.

Of course savings need to be found within capital budgets – but with an average reduction of 28% across government, why have schools been targeted for an 80% cut?

School building and repairs are in complete chaos thanks to Michael Gove. His decision-making over the scrapping of 700 Building Schools for the Future projects was described by a High Court judge as an ‘abuse of power’.

Labour’s investment in school building – not just BSF – initially targeted the backlog of repair that had built up, as well as helping to provide for smaller classes in the primary sector.

Overall, since 1997, around 4,000 schools were built new, rebuilt or significantly refurbished (an average of 25 a week) with 1,000 completed in the last two years.

The Tory-led government has so far refused to give figures for how much has been spent to date on capital funding for Free Schools, how much has been set aside for this work, or where the money is coming from.

But the BBC has reported that at least 15 of the first 35 free school groups have been given or promised government money to pay for their buildings. In six cases this involves the outright purchasing of land or buildings. The cost of just one project is currently estimated at £15m.

Michael Gove is now condemning some children to crumbling classrooms whilst waving his cheque book to try to force through more Free Schools, which will be irrelevant for the vast majority of parents. He won’t tell us how much he has promised to fund his new pet projects but we do know that it is money snatched away from other communities.

Andy Burnham MP is Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary