Schools Re- Building Program Delayed

The government has confirmed this week that its £45billion school-building programme is facing serious delays.Schools minister Jim Knight admitted in a parliament that 12 projects had been delayed in the first wave of Building Schools for the Future, seven delayed in wave two, and five in wave three.

Shadow schools secretary Michael Gove said"Gordon Brown's school building project is woefully behind schedule; billions of pounds are being spent but children and parents are not seeing the results...The Government is failing to deliver on its flagship education project. As the building gets more and more behind schedule, the costs are rising all the time."

Jim Knight responded by saying “As you would expect of a programme of this scale, there have been challenges, and lessons have been learned from the early projects.”

The local authorities with the longest delays in wave 1 were Newham, originally anticipated for completion in January 2009 but now set to finish in March 2011; and Greenwich, originally set to complete in April 2009 but now expected to open in September 2011.

In wave 3, the Luton BSF programme has been delayed for 26 months and will now not open until September 2012. The government said “issues around identifying new sites for new schools” were behind the delay.