Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 8 December 2016 to Question 56150, what the total cost was to the public purse of opening new schools in (a) Birmingham and (b) the West Midlands.

New school places are delivered through a variety of programmes. Supporting local authorities to create sufficient school places is one of the Government’s top priorities. The Government has already committed £7 billion for school places which, together with our investment in 500 new free schools, we expect to deliver 600,000 new places by 2021.

The cost of building schools varies significantly depending on local factors, including: the size of the school; the size of the project; forecasts of construction inflation; and regional variations in the cost of construction. All of these are subject to change over time.

Local authorities report the cost per place of providing new school places through the annual School Capacity data collection. The Department is currently reviewing cost data as reported by local authorities for both primary and secondary schools for 2014/15 and expects to publish this information in due course.

Previously published information on the cost per place of primary schools in academic year 2013/14 for all Local Authorities can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/primary-school-places-local-authority-basic-need-scorecards-2014