§ Mr. BurstowTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many(a) schools have expanded their published roll, (b) extra teachers have been recruited and (c) additional classrooms have been built, as a result of implementing the class size initiative. [124076]
§ Ms Estelle Morris[holding answer 5 June 2000]We are making available £620 million to local education authorities to deliver our pledge to reduce infant class sizes to 30 pupils or fewer. This will allow authorities to provide some 6,000 extra teachers and to build over 2,000 additional infant classrooms. We do not keep information on the number of schools which have adjusted their standard numbers in order to meet the infant class size limit. However, we estimate that around 12,000 additional places are being provided in popular schools as a result of our initiative to eliminate large infant classes.