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(asked on 21st September 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking with local authorities to help ensure that school facilities are available for use by local communities.


Answered by
Jonathan Gullis Portrait
Jonathan Gullis
This question was answered on 28th September 2022

The Department encourages all schools to take an active part in their local communities with many schools already opening up their facilities to support local groups. These include sports teams using school pitches, or community groups using school halls in the evening. For academies, the Department has also taken steps to ensure community use through the funding agreement which states that academy trusts ‘must ensure that each of its academies is at the heart of its community, promoting community cohesion and sharing facilities with other schools and/or other educational institutions and the wider community.’

The Department announced in October 2021 that it will invest nearly £30 million per year to open up school sport facilities in England, as well as to improve the teaching of Physical Education in primary schools. The Department is currently procuring phase 3 of the Opening School Facilities programme, which will provide further support to schools to open their sport and leisure facilities in the evenings, at weekends and during the school holidays.

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