Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will publish the average condition funding required per pupil by local authority.

Responsibility for keeping buildings safe and well-maintained lies with schools and their responsible bodies, such as local authorities, academy trusts and voluntary-aided bodies. The department supports these bodies by providing capital funding, delivering major rebuilding programmes, and offering guidance and support.

The department has allocated over £15 billion since 2015 for keeping schools safe and operational, including £1.8 billion in the 2023/24 financial year. The department’s aim for condition funding is that responsible bodies receive a fair share of the available budget that takes account of their relative condition need. The department uses consistent data on the condition of the school estate to inform the allocation of funding. This means that the department targets more funding to where it is needed most, with schools in relatively poorer condition attracting more funding for their responsible body. It is then up to responsible bodies to use their local knowledge of priorities to target this investment.

This government introduced the Condition Data Collection (CDC), the first ever comprehensive survey of the school estate and one of the largest data collection programmes of its kind in Europe. Thanks to the department’s evidence led approach, following the James Review of Capital in 2011, this government has been able to allocate capital funding based on consistent data on condition need. Almost all government funded schools in England were visited as part of CDC during 2017 to 2019. As part of this, surveyors and engineers assessed the condition of multiple building and land components. This data was then used to estimate the remediation cost to bring all building components back to new or performing as intended. More information is available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/60af7cbbe90e071b54214c82/Condition_of_School_Buildings_Survey_CDC1_-_key_findings_report.pdf. This includes a regional breakdown of condition need.

CDC uses floor area of buildings rather than pupil numbers as a consistent approach to assessing buildings, alongside data on the condition of buildings. This is the approach also used in CDC2, the successor programme to CDC, which is underway and is due to complete in 2026. The average floor area per pupil varies depending on several factors, including the phase of education and type of school. Therefore, this is not an estimate that the department makes.