The new government has ordered a review of the system for issuing maintenance funding to schools, amid concerns the current set-up is “too complicated”.
Officials are also working on a “education estates management portal” to bring together its interactions with trusts and councils over site issues behind a “single front door”.
Dr Jonathan Dewsbury, the Department for Education’s director of education estates and net zero, said “we know there’s room for improvement” in how the condition improvement fund (CIF) and the school condition allocation (SCA) programme worked.
Around 4,500 academies in small trusts, sixth form colleges and voluntary-aided schools are eligible to bid for CIF cash for smaller maintenance projects, while bigger trusts and local authorities receive direct SCA funding.
Schools Week has documented the challenges schools face in getting hold of funding as maintenance costs soar.
An investigation earlier this year revealed how schools were stealthily being encouraged to stump up more of their own cash to access capital funding.
Asked whether CIF was working at the Education Estates conference in Manchester, Dewsbury said: “I think the condition improvement fund is one thing we definitely want to look at.”
‘Too complicated’
“I think the government’s really keen to make sure that consistency of funding continues.
“But I think our conversations with the sector and with responsible bodies, in particular, those small trusts that access CIF, it’s perhaps too complicated and not in some places as accessible as it needs to be.
“So I think that’s what we need to work through and work out a better way of thinking through that type of programme.”
Lindsay Harris, the DfE’s deputy director for education estates, said the new government “has said it wants to look again at CIF, and I think their feeling is that it’s not an ideal system, which we in the department are conscious of”.
“So we will be looking at the whole mix of how we provide maintenance funding, SCA and CIF, over the next year.”
He said the 2025 CIF round, which will open shortly, would follow “roughly the format that it’s taken in recent years, and then we’ll be reviewing in parallel for 2026 onwards, but I don’t know what that will look like yet”.
The new government is yet to set out its approach to capital funding, with much of it hinging on the budget and spending review later this month.
According to reports, chancellor Rachel Reeves is weighing up whether to change fiscal rules in order to unlock extra borrowing to provide more capital cash for projects such as schools and hospitals.
Minister says we must think ‘beyond rebuilding’
Stephen Morgan, the early education minister, who is in charge of education estates, told the conference today the government was “committed to improving the condition of school buildings through annual funding, fixing the problem of RAAC and continuing the school rebuilding programme”.
But he said that, “as demographic shifts in the coming years, the estate will have to serve new requirements”.
He pointed to his government’s plans for 3,000 new school-based nurseries, and said the education estate needed to “more energy efficient and adaptable to climate change”.
Morgan said that meant “thinking beyond just rebuilding”.
“In the long term, we want to rebalance our approach, prioritising sustainable maintenance and retrofit for energy efficiency and climate resilience.”
DfE to create ‘estates management portal’
The DfE is also designing a single “education estates management portal” to bring together its interactions with trusts and councils behind a “single front door”, Dewsbury revealed.
He said research and conversations with the sector “has shown that…the work we deliver with all of you is of high quality, but accessing our services is really difficult and in some places confusing.
Dewsbury said government wanted to build a “really clear service offer to the sector, to make it clear about what the department is responsible for and what responsible bodies are responsible for”.
It will be accessed through a “single front door” behind the existing DfE Connect, which already allows schools to manage things like school census and account returns and access guidance and policy documents.
“That will be an education estates management portal, making sure we take as much advantage of the data and technology as we can.
“An ongoing dialog between estate managers their data and the department, so we can support them in delivering their assets and climate action plans.”
Three ‘pillars’ of support
He said the service offer would have three component “pillars”.
The first – building and rebuild – will cover the DfE’s programmes to replace life-expired buildings and create new space “where it’s needed”.
Dewsbury said in the “short term, we need to deal with the backlog.
“We need to increase the number we’re rebuilding for those life expired buildings, but then we need to get that into a sustained position of a number that works with the wider drive to hit a resilient estate.”
The second pillar is condition resilience and decarbonisation. Again, there is a “significant backlog of need”.
“We want to work with through with you, a service offer in this pillar to ensure we’re focusing on the long term strategic maintenance and priorities required to retrofit, repair and replace key building elements.”
The final pillar is estate management and “enabling responsible bodies to proactively manage their estates by providing accredited products like…frameworks to pull upon for small for asset management, or enhancing capability of the sector through training.
“Our ambition is that this together brings our services in a way that is accessible for responsible body and education settings.”
