Colleen Fletcher – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Colleen Fletcher on 2016-02-01.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to increase the number of primary school places in (a) Coventry, (b) the West Midlands and (c) England.

Edward Timpson

Supporting local authorities in their responsibility to ensure sufficient school places in their area is one of the Department’s top priorities. That is why we have committed to investing £23 billion in school buildings between 2016 and 2021 to create 600,000 new school places, open 500 free schools and address essential maintenance needs.

We allocate basic need funding to local authorities to create the new places required, based on data supplied by authorities themselves. Coventry received £41 million in basic need funding between 2011 and 2015. Local authorities across the West Midlands received a combined total of £305 million over the same period. This support helped to add more than 3,500 primary school places in Coventry between 2010 and 2014, with many more delivered since then and in the pipeline. Nearly 25,000 primary places were added across the West Midlands during this period, and over 300,000 nationally.

The free schools programme is also helping create school places where they are needed; the Sidney Stringer Primary Academy opened in Coventry in September 2015, and will provide 420 primary places once at full capacity.