I have been looking at the work Charlotte Foley and her colleagues have done to produce the Primary Capital Programme submission to go to the DCSF by 16 June...

It is a fantastic statement of our values, priorities and commitment to continue to address the massive underfunding of the primary estate here in Leeds and has involved an enormous amount of work by a dedicated and very talented group of colleagues here at Education Leeds.

I know that we have seen a huge increase in the overall capital programme over the last ten years but the under-investment by successive governments over decades has left us with a legacy of problems that we are all working hard to manage and resolve. The Primary Capital Programme will start to address some of the real issues we are facing and allow us to rebuild 5% of the schools and modernise a further 45% which should mean that over 100 of our primary schools will see significant investment over the next fourteen years.

We are at the stage where we have the rationale and the approach sorted out thanks in part to a small group of headteacher colleagues along with colleagues from across the Council who have worked with us to ensure that we don't miss any opportunities to connect and engage with partners. Headteachers, elected members and other partners and stakeholders have been carefully consulted on the methodology and support for the approach and the model we are using has been massive.

The DCSF guidance requires us to allocate the Programme funding using three criteria... targetting the resources to low performance, deprivation and buildings issues. We have now run all our data through our computer model to generate a list of schools which is available on InfoBase. The good news is that if your school is one of the first 113 schools on the list you are likely to receive this additional funding sometime over the next fourteen years. If your school is not one of the first 113 schools we promise that we will continue to work with you on your buildings issues and continue to argue for all primary schools to be brought up to standard as brilliant learning places for the future.

Importantly if any school feels that we have got it wrong please let us know!
Chris