Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what progress his Department has made on urgent improvements to Russell Scott Primary School in Denton and Reddish constituency; and whether officials from his Department have met with officers from Tameside Council.

We are aware of the condition issues at Russell Scott Primary School and officials within the department have been engaging with Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council to understand and advise on these issues. The department has committed to review and discuss evidence from any further investigative work or surveys undertaken.

The department provides local authorities with an annual School Condition Allocation (SCA) to invest in improving the condition of their maintained schools. We expect local authorities to effectively prioritise this funding on what they identify to be the most urgent priorities across the school estate, ensuring schools are kept safe and operational.

For the financial year 2021-22, Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council has been allocated £1,328,013 in SCA funding. Allocations for the financial year 2022-23 will published in due course.

In addition to annual condition funding, the department has launched a ten-year School Rebuilding Programme. We have announced the first 100 schools that will benefit from the programme as part of a commitment to 500 projects over the next decade.

We recently consulted on how to prioritise future places on the programme. We plan to set out our response to the consultation and details of further rounds of the programme early this year.