Brown's £45bn schools rebuild project delayed

GORDON BROWN'S £45 billion plan to rebuild every secondary school in England is years behind schedule, figures reveal today.

Two thirds of the first projects under the Building Schools for the Future initiative are experiencing delays.

Ministers had promised 200 new or refurbished school buildings by the end of this year, but only 37 will be completed as planned. Government figures obtained by the Conservatives showed schemes in Greenwich were running more than two years behind schedule.

The figures follow concerns that new schools are being built across London without full sporting facilities and fears that the Olympic village development will be hit by the credit crunch. Shadow children's secretary Michael Gove said: "The Government is failing to deliver on its flagship education project.

"As the building gets more and more behind schedule, the costs are rising all the time. Ed Balls's department simply doesn't seem capable of handling large-scale projects like this. It is teachers, parents and children that are missing out as a result." In Greenwich, rebuilding projects were due to have been completed by next April but this has been put back to September 2011.

Officials blamed the piloting of a "non-standard" procurement model by the local authority.

Schools minister Jim Knight hit back at Mr Gove, claiming the Tories would cut spending on schools. "The Tories have pledged to slash our school building programme by £4.5 billion," he said. "This would mean cancelling one in seven future school building projects a total of 360 schools. Instead of criticising the BSF programme, Michael Gove should come clean about which schools would no longer be rebuilt if the Tories had their way.

"The fact is 35 BSF schools are now open and the programme is rapidly accelerating so that over 200 new or refurbished schools will be opening a year by 2011." Ministers put back the original target date of 2015 for completing the programme. But even the revised target of 2020 is in question.