Longer school days fund scrapped

Government plans to fund longer school days to enable children more access to sports activities has been binned.

The £285 million pledge, which would see pupils engage more with sports and art activities, will now go towards building new sports facilities.

It will be put into a pot of $415 million, which has been accumulated by the government’s “sugar tax” as part of The Healthy Pupils Capital Programme and will be available from 2018.

According to Schools Week, two-thirds of the funding will be transferred from the Longer Working Day Scheme, which was announced by former chancellor George Osborne in his budget last year.

Osborne stated that at least a quarter of secondary schools would be given a share of £285 million to enable schools to open for an extra hour each day in order to offer more extra-curricular arts and sports activities.

This has since been dropped as a result of education secretary, Justine Greening’s capital scheme and the cash will now be spend on buildings.

Rachel Gooch, a governor in Suffolk, told Schools Week: “The main issue is the switch to capital from revenue funding.

“Largely we already have space and equipment, but we can’t afford the extra hours to provide additional sports clubs and breakfast clubs on an ongoing basis.

“Extended schools was a significant initiative announced in the last budget and has now been dropped without a whisper.”

The funding move comes after the National Audit office explained that the government would need to spend around £6.7 billion in order to bring every school to a “satisfactory” condition.

A sum of £5.5 billion will be required for repair works on schools and further £1.2 billion is needed to replace parts of buildings at “serious risk of imminent failure”.

In addition the the longer working day scheme, Osborne previously announced a £10 million cash pot to fund breakfast clubs and a further £10 million to double the sports premium.

These are expected to remain in place and will be part of a £1.3 billion investment in 2018-19, raised by the government’s soft drink industry levy.