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£1.4bn to fix ‘collapsing’ schools as Reeves promises to prioritize education and free childcare in Budget
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£1.4bn to fix ‘collapsing’ schools as Reeves promises to prioritize education and free childcare in Budget

Rachel Reeves announces £1.4 billion to rebuild collapsed building schools When you promise to prioritize education And child care inside Budget.

Investment free breakfast clubs for students It will also be tripled and a further £1.8bn will be spent. expand subsidized nursery care.

Chancellor says children ‘should not suffer’ £22bn ‘black hole’ Labor says it was abandoned by the last Tory government.

But experts warned that most of the funding would be sufficient to sustain existing programs.

Rachel Reeves to announce plans to consult on a new five-year social housing tenancy agreement (PA) (PA Wire)Rachel Reeves to announce plans to consult on a new five-year social housing tenancy agreement (PA) (PA Wire)

Rachel Reeves to announce plans to consult on a new five-year social housing tenancy agreement (PA) (PA Wire)

More than 400 schools that are part of the Conservative Party-led government’s rebuilding plan still lack builders.

The BBC’s investigation found that construction contracts were awarded to companies to rebuild just 62 of them so far this summer.

The Treasury said the £1.4bn, an increase of £550m on last year, would “enable the delivery” of the scheme first announced in 2020, with around 50 rebuilds a year to be carried out.

Another £1.8 billion will be used to expand Government-funded childcare, while a further £15 million will be used to help open nurseries in schools.

Labor has vowed to keep the Conservative Party’s promise to provide 30 hours of childcare a week during term time for all children over 9 months from September. But the party warned that the massive expansion of the needed childcare sector would be challenging.

Last week Independent He explained that ministers had removed the word ‘free’ when describing the policy due to growing anger over nursery fees. Under plans announced earlier this month, primary schools will now be able to apply for up to £150,000 of the £15 million. The first phase of the scheme is expected to support up to 300 new or expanded nurseries across England.

A school closes due to RAAC crisis (Jacob King/PA Wire) (PA Wire)A school closes due to RAAC crisis (Jacob King/PA Wire) (PA Wire)

A school closes due to RAAC crisis (Jacob King/PA Wire) (PA Wire)

Ms Reeves announced at the Labor Party conference that a £7m trial of free breakfast clubs will be carried out in up to 750 schools from April.

However, he announced that this figure will rise to £30 million by 2025-26.

Labour’s manifesto pledged to spend £315 million to provide children with a good breakfast at school by 2028-29.

A further £44 million has been announced for kinship and foster carers, including a new ‘kinship allowance’ pilot, to help families with the set-up costs of caring for a loved one.

The Chancellor said: “This Government’s first Budget will set out how we fix the country’s foundations. This will mean tough decisions, but it will also be the start of a new chapter for Britain, growing our economy by investing in our future to rebuild our schools, hospitals and crumbling roads.

“Protecting education funding was one of the first things I wanted to do because our children are the future of this country. “We may have inherited a mess, but they shouldn’t have to suffer for it.”

Education minister Bridget Phillipson said the funding would help “re-place education at the forefront of national life”.

“This is a Budget to strengthen the foundations of the country, so there is no better starting point than the life chances of our children and young people,” he said.

“Our legacy may be terrible, but I will never accept any child learning in a dilapidated classroom.”

But Christine Farquharson, of the highly respected Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank, said “in a tight fiscal context” the commitments “largely reflect decisions to continue with the programmes”.

More than 100 schools, nurseries and colleges in England were forced to close just days before the autumn term last year due to concerns about potentially unsafe reinforced autoclaved concrete (Raac).