Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate she has made of the average cost to the public purse of an additional (a) school place and (b) classroom in each of the next three years.

New school places and classrooms are delivered through a variety of programmes across England. The Department does not centrally collect data on the cost of building primary or secondary schools across all local authorities. The cost of building new places and classrooms varies significantly depending on local factors including: the size of the project; forecasts of construction inflation; and regional variations in the cost of construction. All of these are subject to change over time.

Local authorities report the cost per place of providing new school places through the annual School Capacity data collection. For primary schools this data has been used to produce basic need scorecards. The scorecards detail the cost per place, including for new schools, for each local authority. The latest published scorecards are for the academic year 2013/14 and can be accessed on GOV.UK at: www.gov.uk/government/publications/primary-school-places-local-authority-basic-need-scorecards-2014.