Rishi Sunak was responsible for halving the number of schools to receive funding for a Government rebuilding programme when he was Chancellor, according to a former education mandarin.

Jonathan Slater, who served as permanent secretary at the Department of Education for four years until August 2020, said he was “absolutely amazed” the Treasury did not include more schools to be refurbished in a spending review completed after he left his position.

Speaking to the Today programme, Mr Slater said he was confident a request to increase funding from 100 schools to 200 would be approved after presenting data showing a “critical risk to life” if the programme was not fully funded.

But in February 2021, the Government instead announced just 50 schools would be the first to benefit from a new 10-year rebuilding programme.

“I actually did think this time we would be able to increase funding for the rebuilding programme. The spending review was completed the year after I left the department and I was absolutely amazed to see the decision made by the Government was to halve the school rebuilding programme down from 100 a year to 50 a year.

“We knew what was needed. We knew a proper school building programme was going to be required otherwise these sorts of panics would take place and now they have.”

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