New School Building Projects

Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Education and Welsh Language – in the Senedd at 2:53 pm on 6 October 2021.

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Photo of Jeremy Miles Jeremy Miles Labour 2:53, 6 October 2021

I think that's a really important point, if I may say. On the first point, in relation to net-zero carbon, we are on the journey to making sure that all schools are, but we aren't, obviously, anywhere near the destination at this point. Our task as a Government is to make progress along that path as fast as possible. The role the pilots play in that is to help us work through some of the challenges that the Member's identified in the second part of her question, which is the practical deliverability of some of those policy requirements. So, there are questions here about the maturity of some of the technology, about some supply chain capacity issues. All of those are practical limitations on the speed at which we can progress along that path. But that's the role of the pilot—to help us do that more quickly. 

On the second point, about how we connect the construction of the building to the operation of the building, as her question says, in order to get full value from that investment and the full benefit in environmental terms, we need to make sure that there's an understanding between local authorities and their estate managers about how the new zero-carbon buildings work. One of the issues that is being explored in the pilot projects is how we can develop teaching and learning resources, both to support the schools themselves and also to provide technical support and training to help those staff maintain schools and to operate the schools in a way that enables them to take full advantage.