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).
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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.
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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.”
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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.”
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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”.
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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.”
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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.