Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what criteria proposals for new capital building projects will be required to meet; and what steps he will take to determine the priority for new build schools.

The School Rebuilding Programme was announced in 2020 with a commitment to 500 rebuilding and refurbishment projects over the next decade. We announced the first 100 projects in the programme earlier this year. Further details, including the approach used to prioritise these schools, are published here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-rebuilding-programme.

A consultation on the approach to prioritising schools for future places in the programme closed on 8 October 2021. We plan to publish the response and details of the future prioritisation process in early 2022.

The department approves new free schools through the central free schools route. The process is competitive, and bids are assessed by the department against the specific criteria for each free school round. The most recent application round closed in November 2019 and the department is not currently accepting bids for new free schools. The department will set out plans for further free school approvals in due course.

In addition to the centrally delivered free schools route, local authorities can build new schools under section 6A of the Education and Inspections Act 2006 (the ‘free school presumption route’). We provide funding for all the places that are needed, based on local authorities’ own data on pupil forecasts. Local authorities use this funding to provide places in new schools or through expansions of existing schools. They can work with any school in their local area, including academies and free schools and have the flexibility to make the best decisions for their local area.