Reeves pledges £1.4bn for 'crumbling' classrooms

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.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves made the spending commitment ahead of the autumn Budget next week, following warnings the School Rebuilding Programme is delayed. Head teachers’ unions have said more is needed for school buildings.

Reeves also announced funding for the expansion of free childcare hours and of breakfast clubs in primary schools, and promised to “protect” education in Wednesday’s Budget.

Labour has warned of “difficult decisions” on the public finances, with government sources telling the BBC it could announce tax rises and spending cuts worth £40bn.

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.

It said overall spending on school and college buildings would be set out in the full Budget announcement.

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 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.

Reeves said “protecting funding for education” was among her priorities, and that children “should not suffer” for the “mess” inherited by Labour.

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said she would “never accept that any child should learn in a crumbling classroom”.

The BBC understands the Budget may also include:

• Increasing the National Insurance rate for employers and lowering the threshold for when employers start paying it
• Changes to other taxes such as inheritance tax and capital gains tax
• Extending the freezing of income tax thresholds
• £500m in new funding to build up to 5,000 affordable social homes

Reeves promised on Sunday to deliver a Budget for the “strivers”, writing in the Sun on Sunday that she had to make “tough decisions” on tax but they would be “fair”.

Her comments come after the government was accused of breaking its election promise not to increase taxes on “working people”. The prime minister has since attempted to define exactly who the party had in mind.

Reeves confirmed last week that the government will change the way government debt is measured to allow more borrowing for infrastructure projects.

She told the Observer “difficult decisions around tax and spending” would grant the government space for “capital investments to rebuild our schools and hospitals”.

The government has already announced its intention to reduce winter fuel payments, add VAT to private school fees and the scrap some infrastructure projects.

Labour has repeatedly accused the previous government of leaving a £22bn “black hole” in the public finances – a claim previous chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, described as “spurious”.

The Conservatives have said the Budget was shaping up to be a “nightmare for the British public”.

Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the head teachers’ union, the NAHT, said the government needed to be clear about what it meant by “protecting” funding and called for an increase in funding per pupil for schools.

He said the money for school buildings was “helpful” but that there was still “a significant shortfall in terms of what is needed to restore the school estate to a satisfactory condition”.

The target of rebuilding 50 schools a year has also been called “woefully unambitious” by Pepe Di’lasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders.

Christine Farquharson, associate director at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said the money for the programme would be “enough to keep [it] going in its sixth year”.

The School Rebuilding Programme, first announced in 2020, aims to rebuild or refurbish about 500 schools in a decade.

The BBC reported this month that a total of 23 schools have been completed so far, with a further 490 still waiting. Five more schools have since been added to the scheme.

Most do not yet have builders on board. The DfE originally projected that 83 contracts would be awarded by March 2023 – but its response to a BBC Freedom of Information request revealed only 62 had been issued by June 2024.

Industry experts said construction companies were nervous about taking on contracts in case costs exceed their budgets – and that extra funding would help.

One school on the programme told the BBC a construction company had pulled out altogether – it suspected because of concerns about costs.

The DfE told the BBC the programme was on track, and its original forecasts were made before events including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine affected industry prices.

The schools on the rebuilding programme are those the DfE deems as being most in need.

But a National Audit Office report last year said funding levels in England had contributed to the “deterioration” of the wider school estate.

It said the DfE recommended in 2020 that £5.3bn per year was needed to maintain schools once the programme was expanded.

The DfE ended up requesting an average of £4bn a year between 2021 and 2025 – but the Treasury allocated an average of £3.1bn per year.

Catch up on Hazel’s documentary, Old School Problems, on BBC Sounds.