Chancellor Rachel Reeves to pledge £1.4bn for crumbling schools and childcare in the budget
Rachel Reeves has promised £1.4bn to rebuild crumbling schools and triple funding for free breakfast clubs, as she gears up for her first budget.
The chancellor said children “should not suffer” due to the UK’s depleted public purse, despite the Labour government needing to plug what it calls a £22bn “black hole”.
However, economists said the funding would generally ensure existing plans keep going, rather than pay for many new initiatives, and teachers said much more cash was needed.
The Treasury said the £1.4bn would “ensure the delivery” of the school rebuilding programme, which was announced in 2020 under then prime minister Boris Johnson.
It aims to rebuild or refurbish about 500 schools in a decade, but progress has been slow.
The £1.4bn is understood to be a £550m increase on last year to support the programme.
Last year more than 100 schools, nurseries and colleges in England were forced to shut down days before the autumn term due to safety concerns over reinforced autoclaved concrete (Raac).
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Concrete crisis: ‘It wrecked our lives’
Budget funding for nurseries, breakfast clubs childcare
The Treasury also confirmed £1.8bn would be allocated for the expansion of government-funded childcare, with a further £15m of capital funding for school-based nurseries.
The Treasury said the first stage of the plan would pay for 300 new or expanded nurseries across England.
Ms Reeves also said she would “triple” investment in free breakfast clubs to £30m in 2025-26, after she announced at Labour’s party conference in September a £7m trial across up to 750 schools starting in April.
Labour made a manifesto commitment to spend £315m on breakfast clubs by 2028-29.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
‘I was in tears every night’: Over 320 teachers tell Sky News they have been bullied within their schools
Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) researcher Christine Farquharson said the new £30m figure appears to be a “boost on the previously-announced £7m”.
“But this is still only a tenth of what the Labour manifesto plans to spend by 2028-29, so the bulk of the rollout lies ahead,” she added.
The chancellor said: “This government’s first budget will set out how we will fix the foundations of the country. It will mean tough decisions, but also the start of a new chapter for Britain.
“Protecting funding for education was one of the things I wanted to do first because our children are the future of this country. We might have inherited a mess, but they should not suffer for it.”
Read more:
Analysis: Growing storm over rumoured budget tax rises
Analysis: Labour’s muddle with messaging
Are Starmer and Reeves on the same page with budget?
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
New pilot seeks to support more ‘stable and loving homes’
Another £44m will help kinship and foster carers, including piloting a new kinship allowance to test whether it can increase the number of children taken in by family and friends.
The government hopes it will “keep more children in stable and loving homes”.
Ms Farquharson said that “in a tight fiscal context” the commitments “largely reflect decisions to continue programmes”.
She said: “Putting £1.4bn into the school rebuilding programme next year will be enough to keep what was always intended as a 10-year programme going in its sixth year.
“£1.8bn for the rollout of new childcare entitlements similarly confirms plans set out under the previous government.”
The Budget – a special programme on Sky News
School leaders outline what else is needed
School leaders warned that the funding announcement left a “significant shortfall in terms of what is needed to restore the school estate to a satisfactory condition”.
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers union, said: “It is reassuring to hear that school funding will be protected next year and that education will continue to be prioritised as schools face continuing financial pressures.
“It is now important that the government is very clear about what it means by ‘protected’.
“We urge the government to use the reduction in pupil numbers some schools are facing to increase per pupil funding both in the short and longer term.”
He said the £1.4bn was “helpful” but urged the Treasury to use the spending review next spring to commit to a “major school rebuilding programme”.
👉 Listen to Electoral Dysfunction on your podcast app 👈
A Conservative Party spokesman said: “In government, the Conservatives had a relentless focus on giving every child the best start in life.
“We launched the largest-ever expansion of childcare, recruited 27,000 teachers and drove up school standards.
“On the other hand, Labour are breaking their promises to the public.
“Just like their broken promises on hiking taxes and fiddling the fiscal rules, they’ve broken their promises to students – introducing a new tax on education and plotting the cancellation of dozens of new schools projects.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Who will the tax rise hit?
What else can we expect from the budget?
Ms Reeves will also use her first budget on Wednesday to announce a change to the UK’s debt rule.
It is designed to pave the way for the government to spend billions more on long-term infrastructure projects.
She is also expected to hike employer national insurance by up to two percentage points and lower the threshold at which employers pay in – measures that would together raise around £20bn.
Capital gains tax, inheritance tax and fuel duty are other options to raise revenue Ms Reeves has on the table, as she seeks to put the economy on a firmer footing.
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, deputy leader of Reform UK Richard Tice, former governor of the Bank of England Mervyn King, and director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies Paul Johnson will be on the Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips show on Sky News from 8.30am this morning.
The crash involving a cargo ship and oil tanker off the East Yorkshire coast is bad news for the sea, fish and air in the area. What we don’t know yet is quite how bad it will be.
That depends on a few things – but the speed of the collision, clouds of filthy black smoke from the fires and the leaked fuel are certainly worrying.
Firstly, it matters what was on board those two massive vessels.
Follow live: Jet fuel spilling into sea after tanker collision
Analytics firm Vortexa estimates the 183m-long tanker was carrying about 130,000 barrels of jet fuel (kerosene), which is now leaking into the sea.
Jet fuel is not as sticky or viscous as heavier types of oil, thankfully, so it’s less likely to clog the feathers and fur of birds and seals. It can also be broken down by natural bacteria.
But it can still poison fish and kill animals and plants on the shoreline if it makes its way into the soil there.
The Marine Conservation Society has pointed out the site in the Humber estuary is close to some protected areas and is important for seabirds and harbour porpoises.
And both ships will have been powered by a dirtier, heavier kind of oil – likely marine gas oil or heavy fuel oil, though we don’t know the details yet.
Heavy fuel oil is nasty stuff.
Pic: Bartek Smialek/PA
Cheap, thick and tar-like, it can smother animals and is very dangerous if they consume it, and is extremely difficult to clean up. Let’s hope this isn’t creeping around the North Sea already.
We don’t know how much of either the jet fuel or the oil powering the ships has leaked, or how much will be burned off in the violent fires – which themselves are ploughing black smoke and filthy air pollution into the surrounding atmosphere.
And we don’t know for sure what was on the Solong cargo ship and if, or what, will go into the sea.
Cargo ship ‘had sodium cyanide on board’
It was carrying 15 containers of sodium cyanide among other cargo, according to a report from maritime data provider Lloyd’s List Intelligence.
The container vessel was also transporting an unknown quantity of alcohol, said the casualty report – an assessment of incidents at sea – citing a message from the local coastguard.
Plastic takes hundreds of years to break down, and potentially can choke or trap animals.
Many of us have seen that uncomfortable viral video of a turtle having a straw yanked out of its nose. Previous accidents on cargo ships have seen plastic Lego pieces wash up in Cornwall 25 years later.
Read more:
How UK North Sea platforms dump gas
Secondly, the impact depends on the sea and weather conditions around it.
Things like the wind and currents affect how an oil spill spreads in the sea. Scientists can draw up computer models to simulate how the oil could behave.
Thirdly, it matters how quickly this is all tackled and then cleaned up, if necessary, and if it can be.
Usually the slower the response, the worse the impact.
The coastguard has said the incident “remains ongoing” and it has started assessing the “likely counter pollution response” that will be required.
Such a response might need the help of numerous public bodies: the government environment department, the transport department, the Environment Agency and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency.
So for now the best we can hope for – aside from the welfare of the people involved – is that not all the oil is spilled or burnt, that conditions are calm and that rescuers and those cleaning up can work swiftly.
-
Sports2 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports11 months agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports1 year agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports3 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business2 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway