200 schools to get solar panels in £80m green project

Two-hundred schools will be equipped with solar panels as part of government-owned Great British Energy’s first major project.

About £80 million will be used to fit the technology to primary and secondary roofs – with the bulk of them located in the most deprived parts of the country.

The first of the solar panels will be installed by the end of the summer, with the rollout expected to be completed the following April.

Education secretary Bridget Phillipson said: “With this investment we are backing our teachers and delivering for our young people – saving schools thousands on their bills to reinvest in a brilliant education for each and every child.

“The installation of solar will not only benefit schools financially, but will support pupils to develop green skills, promoting careers in renewables and supporting growth in the clean energy workforce.”

The government estimates “only about 20 per cent” of schools have solar panels. It expects the technology to save each primary and secondary involved in the scheme “up to £25,000 per year”.

The support will be directed at schools, selected by the government, with “buildings that are able to accommodate solar panels in areas of England most in need”.

Most of them will be clustered in deprived parts of the northeast, West Midlands and northwest. But there will be at least 10 schools selected from each region.  

They will start their feasibility assessments in April, before being named.

FE colleges to work with contractors

Each cluster will include a further education college that will work with the contractors appointed to promote careers in renewables, government added.

This could be “through work placements, skills bootcamps and workshops”.

National Association of Headteachers general secretary Paul Whiteman said schools “have been keen to lead the way when it comes to sustainable and greener energy”, but most have found it “cost prohibitive”.

Great British Energy will put forward £40 million for schools, while the Department for Education will provide a further £40 million of match funding.

About £10 million of the cash put forward by DfE was from its “net-zero accelerator programme” (NZAP), with the rest understood to be new funding.

The NZAP team, which was launched to help groups of schools “harness their collective buying power” to create “greater value for money”, will procure the panels.

Alex Green, the head of campaign group Let’s Go Zero, stressed that “while 200 schools may seem like a small number, delivering at this scale within just one year is an ambitious and fast-paced start”.

This comes after a National Audit Office report two years ago revealed the DfE had undertaken exploratory analysis “test the potential opportunity from investment in retrofitting solar panels and energy efficiency measures for all state schools”.

This suggested the cost “might be in the region of several billion pounds”.

Doing this “could result in potential savings… slightly higher than costs but with significant variation between schools depending on factors such as size, building condition and location”.