Sunak refused to fully fund repairs of England’s crumbling schools, says ex-official

PM shown evidence of critical risk to life' when chancellor, says former top civil servant at Department for Education

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Rishi Sunak refused to properly fund a school rebuilding programme when he was chancellor, despite officials presenting evidence that there was a critical risk to life" from crumbling concrete panels, the Department for Education's former head civil servant has said.

After the department told Sunak's Treasury that there was a need to rebuild 300 to 400 schools a year in England, he gave funding for only 100, which was then halved to 50, said Jonathan Slater, the permanent secretary of the department from 2016 to 2020.