Some 35,000 thousand young people across Scotland will benefit from an announcement that paves the way for COSLA, local authorities and the Scottish Government, all working together, to invest an additional £1.25 bn through the Scottish Futures Trust (SFT) to build approximately 55 new schools.

In a statement to Parliament yesterday afternoon, Education Secretary Fiona Hyslop announced £800m of Government funding for local authorities towards the construction of new primary and secondary schools from 2010.

The Government says that the 35,000 pupils to benefit are in addition to the 100,000 pupils who will have moved out from crumbling schools to new modern buildings in the lifetime of this parliament.

Ms Hyslop said: "This new investment will provide state-of-the-art schools for almost 35,000 young people. It will make the cost of replacing secondary schools much more manageable for local authorities and comes on top of the record levels of funding already being provided to Scotland's councils in the local government settlement.

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"Work on the first buildings will start in 2010, significantly boosting economic activity up and down the country and generating or maintaining several thousand construction jobs."

Already Angus, East Renfrewshire and Midlothian councils have come together to share best practice and to design a common approach to the school building programme with SFT. Their work will underpin the first announcements to be made in September.

Ms Hyslop said: "We have already honoured our commitment to continue to improve the school estate - and this is yet another demonstration of that commitment. This Government has already signed off eight major local authority building projects since May 2007 and another three are in the pipeline."

The bulk of the new funding will pay for the construction costs of the secondary schools. Local authorities will require to meet the remaining third of the cost. The remainder of the Government funding will support the building of the primary schools on a 50/50 basis with local authorities.

The initial tranches of authorities to benefit will be announced this year, with the balance in 2011. Funding will come on stream next financial year for primary schools and the following for secondaries. All the primary schools will be built by 2014-15 and the secondaries by 2017-18.

The Scottish Government has built up a detailed national picture of needs across Scotland, largely drawn from school estate data. This will be the basis for discussions with COSLA to identify which authorities on a needs basis will benefit first from this new school building programme.

(GK/BMcc)