Capital spend on Free Schools
07 Feb 2011
There was a very interesting and well-researched feature on The Today Programme on Radio 4 this morning in which Sanchia Berg examined the capital costs of Free Schools.
After the abandonment of the buildings and refurbishment programme for all state schools (Building Schools for the Future), the government continued to provide £50 million for capital spending on new Free Schools.
But Sanchia Berg discovered that most of that pot of money has already gone on just a handful of the first Free Schools to be approved.
The government refused to supply a minister to the programme to answer the points raised and has refused to say how much capital spending has been approved for Free Schools. This is despite the coalition government's promises of greater transparency over government spending.
The General secretary of the NASUWT union, Chris Keates, has described this as "a scandal". She said "first we are told that free school proposers will have to find their own capital to set up a school. Then we are told that £50 million has been set aside. Now we learn that the amount being spent is 'undisclosed' and subject to individual negotiation".
You can listen to the Today programme report here: news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9389000/9389341.stm
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Stan terry - 07 Feb 2011
Free Schools and Capital spending.
well what a surprise. They taketh with one hand and giveth with the other( so long as you fit with their latest ideological piece of nonsense)Interestingly PfS is been given responsibility for advising the free schools ( suddenly that looks a very accurate statement)on their capital aquisitions. Wasn't this organisation cited by Mr. Gove as being a complete waste of taxpayer funding and overly bureaucratic?Frankly they(the DFE) don't seem to have a clue and whilst 1000's of school are crying out for proper funding to refurbish their decaying infrastructure, schools which were meant to be funding their own capital assets are getting the funding from the DFE. Madness!!!