£2 billion additional funding for school construction programme
The news came as the Whitmore Park Primary School in Coventry, the first school rebuilt under the programme, was opened.
Laws published an update on the government's commitment to build around 300 new schools and make improvements in almost 600 others, revealing that a second phase is now scheduled which will run from 2015 to 2021. Laws said that this was the biggest public effort to improve the schools estate in decades, and that the initiative was on track to meet its goal of improving 261 school buildings in very poor condition by the end of 2017.
He said: "The original Priority School Building Programme worked on the basis of the condition of the whole school site. We will now refine this to look at targeting individual school buildings, as well as whole school rebuilds where this is appropriate, so that the department can focus much more tightly on addressing specific issues in the estate."
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