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Michael Gove has announced that the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme will be frozen.
In a statement delivered to the Commons this afternoon, the education secretary said the school building programme begun under Labour had "absurd" levels of bureaucracy.
He said the scheme was responsible for one third of the education department's capital spending, but was characterised by "massive overspends" and "botched construction projects".
And he said that the decision to stop the programme had to be made due to the "truly appalling state" of the public finances.
"We have to bare down on waste and bureaucracy which characterised Labour's years in office," he told MPs.
"The last government was supposed to have built two hundred wholly new schools by the end of 2008," he said.
But Gove said by that date the project had only been responsible for rebuilding thirty-five and refurbishing thirteen.
"One school was built with corridors so narrow the whole building had to be restructured," he said.
He added: "In three others, pupils collapsed form heat exhaustion as design faults repeatedly sent temperature to 38 degrees".
In a statement the Department for Education said that 715 schools will no longer be rebuilt or refurbished through BSF, but that 706 schools will be opened under new arrangements being agreed today.
Gove said Labour's legacy was a "dilapidated school estate" and that "the whole way that we build schools needs radical reform."
Shadow education secretary Ed Balls, who had previously overseen the project as schools secretary, said it was a "black day" for the nation's schools.
"In once stroke he has axed hundreds of brand new schools from communities across the length and breath of the country," he said.
He added: "Freezing the programme is hammer blow for many hundreds of thousands of children".
Balls said the Labour government had built or refurbished four thousand schools, representing "the biggest school building programme since the Victorian era".
And he said it was a "disgrace" that Gove had not provided a list of the schools that would be affected by the move.
"The secretary of state knows the names of the schools, he has a duty to tell this House and the country," he said.
Gove also announced the expansion of expansion of Teach First into secondary schools across the whole country and a new Teach First Primary programme.
He said the programme would be "more than doubled" to 1,140 teachers a year.
But Balls said the leadership of Teach First had warned him that the acceleration of the programme would "put at risk" the quality of the service.
Article Comments
Building Schools for the Future (BSF) has transformed many schools.
The scrapping of these projects will cause enormous disappointment to the staff and pupils affected and many will continue to endure temporary classrooms and crumbling buildings for years to come.
While cutting spending, the government is pressing ahead with its free schools, which will require an injection of new money and create thousands of surplus places in existing schools.
Voice: the union for education professionals
6th Jul 2010 at 10:38 am
The coalition government's announcement to scale back the BSF programme will devastate parents and schools and condemn thousands of children and young people to a future of Dickensian education.
The Building Schools for the Future transformed over 4,000 schools in a way not witnessed since the Victorian era.
The refusal of the government to come clean about which schools will be rebuilt or refurbished and which will not demonstrates a cruel and unjustified level of arrogance.
Chris Keates, NASUWT
6th Jul 2010 at 10:11 am
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