Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what her policy is on the number of free schools to be built each year.

Delivering enough school places is one of the government’s top priorities and the free schools programme is part of delivering this. Thanks to our reforms there are 1.8 million more children in schools rated good or outstanding than in 2010. Over 50 new schools are expected to open in September 2017. There are currently over 350 further schools in the pipeline that will create over 150,000 places when the schools reach capacity.

We have already committed £5.8bn for local authorities up to 2020 to deliver new school places, on top of our investment in the free schools programme.