Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will make it his policy to immediately increase the Department for Education's Capital Departmental Expenditure Limits (CDEL) to a level equivalent in real terms to that set in 2010.

The department engages regularly with HM Treasury about investment in schools, including capital investment. The department’s budget was set at the Spending Review and included £19.4 billion in capital funding to support the education sector between the 2022/23 and 2024/25 financial years.

From this, we have announced £1.8 billion to help maintain and improve the condition of school buildings and grounds in the 2022/23 financial year. This sustains the increased level of funding announced in the 2021/22 financial year, which was significantly higher than the £1.4 billion per year typically allocated over the 2016-2021 Spending Review period. It comes on top of the new School Rebuilding Programme which will transform 500 schools over the next decade.

Our investment in this Spending Review period builds on nearly £30 billion of capital investment in education between the 2016/17 and 2021/22 financial years, including over £6 billion for new mainstream school places through basic need capital allocations, £665 million for places for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities or requiring alternative provision and over £13 billion improving or replacing school buildings.

Since 2010, capital funding for schools has undergone a series of reforms. One of the drivers of differences in capital funding is closing the Buildings School for the Future programme in 2010 and reforms to drive down the costs of school building. A review of school capital investment by Sebastian James in 2011 found that the Building Schools for the Future programme was expensive and did not target schools in the greatest need. The design and procurement process was not designed to create high and consistent quality or low cost, nor to reduce costs over time. Our programmes now deliver more efficiently and better target buildings in the worst condition.