Those of you who have followed the progress of Building Schools for the Future and the Priority Schools Building programme, may be interested in the latest announcement about capital funding for schools. Mr Gove has made a Ministerial statement about capital funding of around £4billion that will be made available to create new school places and to carry out maintenance and repair work to existing school buildings. The Department explains that the announcement includes details on the allocation of:
- £1.6 billion of basic need funding for 2013-15 to local authorities to provide additional school places where needed in their area;
- •£595 million of maintenance capital for 2013-14 to local authorities to support the needs of the schools that they maintain and for the Sure Start children’s centres in their area;
- •£392 million of maintenance capital for academies for 2013-14;
- •£154 million of locally-coordinated VA programme capital for 2013-14 to support the maintenance capital needs of voluntary-aided schools;
- •£200 million of devolved formula capital for schools;
- • a total of £65 million for sixth-form college maintenance and devolved formula capital funding for 2013-14, and £80 million basic need funding for 16 to 19 demographic pressures for 2013-15; and
- • a total of £15 million funding for Independent Specialist Providers (ISPs) for 2013-15.
Information is also now available about:
- applications for the Targeted Basic Need programme, for funding for local authorities in England to build high quality new Academy and Free schools on their own sites and to permanently expand existing good and outstanding Academies and maintained schools (deadline noon on 30 April 2013);
- applications for the 16-19 Demographic Growth Capital Fund 2013-2015 (deadline 30 April 2013).
Rachel Kamm