Primary Schools (Hansard, 6 March 1984)

§ 4. Mr. Terry Lewis
asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what changes have been made in his Department's capital allocation criteria to capital allocations for the replacement of pre-1903 primary schools.

§ Sir Keith Joseph
The allocations of prescribed expenditure made to local education authorities continue to take account of the number of pupils who are accommodated in unremodelled primary schools built before 1903. This is one of the measures of relative need which are employed for the purpose of making allocations—it is for each authority to decide how its allocation will be used.

§ Mr. Lewis
Local education authorities still have significant stocks of old primary schools and it would appear that the criterion that the Secretary of State has enunciated has been left out of allocations throughout the country. When will the Secretary of State address himself more seriously to this problem? How long must we expect children, especially in urban areas, to be educated in substandard buildings?

§ Sir Keith Joseph
There has been no recent change in the weighting given to pre-1903 primary schools. There is pressure on nearly all aspects of school building and capital spending except for a reduction in the requirement for basic needs.

§ Mr. Robert Atkins
Does my right hon. Friend accept that when a school of such age is closed, as is happening in my constituency with St. Aidan's primary school in Bamber bridge, it would be much more sensible to make use of existing property and expand on it rather than build an entirely new school or force people to travel to another school some two miles further away?

§ Sir Keith Joseph
I cannot judge the arguments for and against my hon. Friend's thought. The decision is for local education authorities, and I can only advise him to put his idea to his local education authority.

§ Mr. Freeson
Will the Secretary of State bear in mind an extremely important aspect of the issue concerning capital expenditure in schools which for some time has not received the attention that it should have done? I refer to the many schools where, for whatever reason, there has been a failure over many years to establish proper planned maintenance programmes, with the result that there is a need for considerable capital expenditure to make good the deficiencies that are now appearing. That is occurring in many education authorities' areas. Will action be taken to provide the necessary capital resources?

§ Sir Keith Joseph
The right hon. Gentleman put his question in the right framework, because the failure to maintain schools in some cases goes back over many years. That should, to a large extent, be revenue expenditure, and I endorse his view that more regularity should be given to maintenance.