The Allocation of Funding for Education

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:52 pm on 20 March 2018.

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Photo of Angela Burns Angela Burns Conservative 2:52, 20 March 2018

Earlier this month, your Cabinet Secretary for Education announced a £14 million injection of cash to help fund school repairs. This is a very welcome sum of money, and her statement very clearly said that every school will receive some funding. Now, throughout Wales, we have a number of new builds, either built this year or literally in the last sort of 18 months to two years. In my own constituency, I have a case of two schools, one beside the other. One is brand new and cost millions of pounds. The other one is a very old school, decades old, where they've literally had to beg and borrow in order to be able to turn it into a Welsh-medium school and to kit it out. I've been there; the roof is leaking, the tiles are falling off, et cetera. Do you think it is appropriate that every school should have some of this allocation? Would it not be more sensible—or would you consider looking at the schools that really need help to give us a good, modern-day learning environment, or as best as we can get in some of those very old school buildings we have, rather than also giving some of this money to very new builds?