Catherine West – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Catherine West on 2016-01-19.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to increase secondary school places in London.

Nick Gibb

Local authorities are responsible for planning and securing sufficient school places in their area, and supporting them to do so is one of this Government’s top priorities. This is why the Government is investing £23 billion overall in school buildings to create 600,000 new school places, open 500 new free schools and address essential maintenance needs.

Basic need funding is allocated to local authorities to help them to create new school places. This Government has allocated £960 million to local authorities in London for places needed between 2015 and 2018, including at secondary level. This is in addition to the £2 billion London received between 2011 and 2015, almost 40% of the total funding provided to local authorities to help create new places in this period.

This funding has helped to create 155,000 new school places between 2010 and 2014. Of these new places, over 30,000 have been created in 52 open free schools. There are over 60 approved new schools due to open in London in future academic years.