Selective Schools Expansion Fund

(asked on 23rd October 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many school places his Department has estimated will be created through the Selective Schools Expansion Fund (a) in total and (b) at each of those schools awarded such funding.


Answered by
Nick Gibb Portrait
Nick Gibb
This question was answered on 28th October 2019

The Selective Schools Expansion Fund (SSEF) 2018-19 has provided funding of £49.3 million for 16 expansion projects to date. The Department has not published the amount of funding allocated to each school as this is commercially sensitive information.

The Department estimates that SSEF funding will create over 2,700 more good school places. The number of school places created at individual schools will be announced as part of each school’s published admission numbers following completion of the expansion project.

All of the 16 successful projects have planned to build capacity on their existing sites. There are no expansion projects on satellite sites.

Details of the Selective Schools Expansion Fund for 2019-20 is due to be announced during the autumn. Information will be available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/selective-schools-expansion-fund.

The factors taken into account when assessing whether a proposal to expand onto a satellite site is a genuine expansion are provided in our guidance “Making significant changes to an open academy and closure by mutual agreement,” available here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/751304/Making_significant_changes_and_closure_academy.pdf.

The former Secretary of State for Education (Nicky Morgan), my right hon. Friend the Secretary for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport made a statement in the house in October 2015, outlining the reasons for the decision to approve the expansion of the Weald of Kent Grammar school. The statement is available here: https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2015-10-19/debates/15101917000002/SchoolExpansion#contribution-15101917000003.

The Department has no plans to publish any further information about the decision to approve the expansion of the Weald of Kent grammar school.

Reticulating Splines