Yorkshire awarded £159m to create extra school places and repair crumbling buildings

Schools across Yorkshire are to receive a £159m cash injection for extra school places and building repairs.
The Government has announced a 159m funding boost for Yorkshire's schools.The Government has announced a 159m funding boost for Yorkshire's schools.
The Government has announced a 159m funding boost for Yorkshire's schools.

The announcement by Education Secretary Justine Greening will help to create almost 20,000 more places in the region by 2020.

Education funding: Find out what your school is getting as Yorkshire is awarded £195mIt is part of £230m package the Government has committed to investing in the county's school estate over the next three years.

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Extra places are needed to keep pace with a rising school-age population - and to create places in a new wave of grammar schools.

The funding allocated today includes £55m for Yorkshire's schools to invest in upgrading their buildings and gives the go-ahead to 141 vital school building work projects - from roof repairs and kitchen refurbishments to new heating and windows.

Rotherham has been the most successful recipient of funding in the region, with a total of 33 projects being given approval, while York is at the other end of the spectrum with just three.

It comes as new Government figures show that almost 735,000 additional school places have been created nationally since 2010 – 51,000 of them in Yorkshire – with 92 per cent of new primary school places and 85 per cent of new secondary places created in good or outstanding schools in the region in 2015-16.

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Education Secretary Justine Greening said: “Our Plan for Britain is to build a fairer society, with a good school place available for every child.

“This investment of £159 million in the Yorkshire and the Humber, together with our proposals to create more good school places, will help ensure every young person in the region has the opportunity to fulfill their potential.”

Nationally the Government has announced a funding boost of £2.4bn to create new school places and maintain and improve the condition of school buildings.

The allocation of funds for school places and buildings is not new money, but draws upon funding from the 2015 spending review.

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There will be £980m for extra school places and £1.4bn to improve the condition of schools, with 1,500 school building projects to be funded across the country.

Alongside this multi-billion pound investment, the Government is considering wider proposals to lifting the ban on new grammar schools, with the education secretary promising a "new model" for grammars and stressing that local communities would have a "choice over how selection works".