Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what comparative assessment she has made of the effectiveness of information collected from schools which have undergone both condition data collection (a) one and (b) two exercise surveys.

Well-maintained, safe school buildings are a priority for the department to support a high-quality education for all children. The department has allocated over £15 billion since 2015 for keeping schools safe and operational, including £1.8 billion in the 2023/24 financial year. In addition, the School Rebuilding Programme is transforming poor condition buildings at over 500 schools.

​​​It is the responsibility of those who run schools, such as academy trusts, local authorities and voluntary-aided school bodies, to manage the safety and maintenance of their schools based on local knowledge of their estates.

This government introduced the Condition Data Collection (CDC), the first ever comprehensive survey of the school estate and one of the largest data collection programmes of its kind in Europe. Previous administrations took no action to understand the condition of the school estate. Running from 2017 to 2019, the survey allowed the department to understand the condition of the school estate over a sustained period, and informed capital funding and programmes by providing information on the condition of all 22,000 government funded school buildings and 260 further education colleges in England.

CDC2 started in 2021 and will complete in 2026. Any comparative assessment between both programmes will be undertaken upon the completion of CDC2 in 2026. The department has taken steps to ensure that the condition data collected is consistent and accurate across the school and further education college estate. Early indications from the CDC2 programme suggest that, in almost every case where a category D was identified in CDC1, it has since been addressed.

CDC visits are carried out by professionally trained building surveyors and mechanical engineers, who follow a specific methodology. Data goes through a robust quality assurance process, and schools are given the opportunity to feedback and comment on their report.

The department is not aware of any systemic misidentification of construction types in CDC1.