§ Sir Malcolm ThorntonTo ask the Secretary of State for Education how many primary and secondary schools in England and Wales were built before(a) 1914, (b) 1939 and (c) 1960; and what estimate his Department has made of renovation costs to modernise such schools.
§ Mr. Forth"A Study of School Building", a report by an interdepartmental group of the Department of Education and Science and the Welsh Office, assisted by local government officers using information from a school building survey of maintained schools, was published by HMSO in 1977 and gives the latest information on the age of the school building stock. On the basis of a 10 per cent. survey of primary and secondary schools in England and 10 per cent. of primary schools and 20 per cent. of secondary schools in Wales, there were in 1976 8,300 schools built before 1903, 10,200 schools built before 1918 and 12,600 schools built before 1946. A further 10,600 schools were built between 1946 and 1976, in which one third of the places were completed by 1960.
The survey of school buildings published by the Department in 1987, based upon a survey of one in 30 county and voluntary controlled primary and one in six 560W secondary schools in England only, reported estimated national costs, at November 1986 prices, of about £2,000 million to bring buildings up to a defined standard for 1991 projected pupil numbers. Some of these costs will have been met from recurrent expenditure and from capital investment on county, controlled and aided schools of £3,300 million since the survey.