Responding to the Department for Education's allocation of £456m to improve school buildings, Paul Whiteman, general secretary of school leaders’ union NAHT, said:

“Funding for the school estate has been cut dramatically over the last decade and the government has itself admitted that the risk of collapse in some school buildings is now very likely.

“Current levels of funding fall woefully short of what is needed to address these worrying risks and ministers need to acknowledge this and show far greater ambition than this kind of ‘business as usual’ announcement, which is not new money and was previously announced in the spring Budget.

“What is needed is a massively expanded programme of investment in maintenance, repair and replacement of school buildings.”