The Department for Education’s School Rebuilding Programme (SRP) can offer vital support to schools that are struggling with crumbling buildings, dilapidated doors and windows, or electrical and mechanical issues.

To date, the SRP has already provided 100 schools with the major investment needed to repair and rebuild their sites. A new round of funding recently opened for the 2022-23 school year, allowing for up to 300 schools to carry out urgent rebuilding or refurbishment work.

In previous phases, the DfE decided which schools would receive this support based on their own condition data. However, in the latest round of the SRP (which opened recently), schools and trusts can now actively nominate schools for the funding.

This means there is a real opportunity for schools and trusts to be more involved in the process - by checking their data and seeing whether they fit the criteria, rather than just sitting back and waiting to see if they’ll be chosen, which is certainly a positive.

How it works

So what do schools and trusts need to know to be selected?

The first thing to breakdown is the three different definitions of “rebuilding need” that schools can apply against:

1. Structural - there are serious safety issues at the school that means the building is unfit for use.

2. Severe deterioration of the building fabric, whether this is the walls, the windows, the floors or the doors.

3. Mechanical and electrical issues. However, these are unlikely to be severe enough by themselves to be successful - the DfE guidance states that the building will need another fault that makes a refurbishment or rebuild the most cost-effective option overall.

Overall, the key is that any application must state why the building will close in the very near future if these issues aren’t addressed.

What’s more, they must show that knocking the building down and rebuilding is more cost-effective than just repairing the issues.

So where would schools find this information to prove this?

Well, every school in the country will have had a condition survey in the last five years organised by the DfE. Schools can look back through those surveys and identify key criteria to support their applications.

But one fly in the ointment is that the first round of these surveys wasn’t all-encompassing, and they don’t include structural information.

The evidence challenge 

Unfortunately, that’s one of the key criteria for success in this application, so if you want to apply via the structural route, you’ll need to gather this data yourself - likely by commissioning condition surveys or reports from qualified people, whether those are structural engineers or building surveyors.

This will need to include professional evidence of severe condition need such as structural surveys and roofing surveys, as well as photos and reports from qualified building professionals showing the building is deteriorating and is close to being actively unsafe for students.

Where it gets complicated, particularly for a lot of smaller academy trusts, is that they may not have this evidence to hand.

Announcing this round of funding may help inspire them to start gathering this information for future phases, but it means they may well miss the boat this time around.

Even schools that have all this information need to act fast, though, as there is a pretty tight window in which to apply: the SRP was announced on 3 February and will close just one month later on 3 March - with half term slap bang in the middle of that.

A very short deadline

For many schools, this is effectively a three-week window, creating a race against time to get all the information required. To do that in this timeframe will be very difficult if you don’t already hold this information.

If you do have all this, then you can go about applying online. Again, this requires planning: the nomination process is done via an online portal and can take time, so it’s worth sorting that now as part of any submission plans.

You’ll need to make sure your project ticks every box in terms of what the particular issues are, what the construction type of the building is and how it aligns to the specified criteria.

You can use the condition survey as part of this, but you’ll also need to detail any changes made to the building since the survey took place.

It all comes down to providing as clear a picture as possible as to why that building should be knocked down and rebuilt and highlighting the time pressures involved; if this work doesn’t take place as soon as possible then whole classes of students will have nowhere to learn.

This comes back to having that information to hand, as schools won’t be able to get it all from scratch over the next three weeks.

Other options available 

Of course, schools have other options alongside the SRB. Academy trusts with more than five schools can opt to receive their School Condition Allocation (SCA) - a set formula that guarantees them a certain amount of funding to complete infrastructure projects.

Alternatively, they can choose instead to apply to the Condition Improvement Fund (CIF) - an application process for individual projects.

This may provide larger amounts of funding than the former option, but you must rely on a strong application - the Education and Skills Funding Agency and the DfE will decide whether you will be successful.

Hence, many trusts take the SCA option because it offers guaranteed funding - as opposed to hoping for success with the CIF.

Schools can opt for one of these options as well as the SRB but will have to showcase exactly why they need this funding.

Check your working

Overall, the main point for all of these processes - but especially the SRB - is to read every word of the guidance carefully.

This may seem obvious, but the process is going to be so competitive that the slightest misstep will see your application rejected.

It might be a time-limited process, but the only other option will be waiting for the next round of CIF support to open at the end of this calendar year. Yet too many schools don’t have the time to wait for this and need rebuilding work to start as soon as possible.

But the onus will be on them to prove their need to the DfE. If they can, then the SRP will be a vital lifeline to maintaining their school estate.

Jon French is director of operations for the David Ross Education Trust