Northern Ireland schools are in need of a £300m injection for outstanding maintenance work, it has emerged.

The age and condition of the £4.5bn schools’ estate coupled with budget cuts have resulted in the growing backlog.

The grim figures which emerged at the first meeting of the new Education Committee at Stormont mean that on average £250,000 needs to be spent on the province’s 1,200 schools to bring them up to standard.

And with cuts already being made to maintenance budgets that figure is set to increase – the Northern Eastern Education and Library Board has revealed that it will be slashing its spending by almost 11% this year (£370,000) while last month former Education Minister Caitriona Ruane reallocated £41m from the capital budget, which includes maintenance work to the resource budget to protect front-line services.

She also told the Assembly in March that just £38m had been spent on maintenance work in 2010/11.

Responding to questions from the nine MLAs who attended the meeting, John McGrath, deputy secretary at the Department of Education, described the “significant reduction” in the budget as a “major difficulty” for the schools’ estate.

It has also come to light that the Department of Education has received over 1,000 applications from schools for minor works (projects under £500,000) which would cost £100m.

However, the department is already under severe financial pressure and has to make more than £305m of savings by 2014/15 – £100m of that in the current financial year.

While Mr McGrath confirmed new Education Minister John O’Dowd will be seeking “to secure additional resources over the next three years” he stated “the signals from DFP (Department of Finance and Personnel) are there will be little scope for bids” in the forthcoming June monitoring round.

Areas that have been identified for saving include management, administration, pupil transport, procurement and ICT in schools.

Mr McGrath revealed that £9m had already been achieved in a voluntary redundancy programme with an additional £6m coming out of management and administration including further job losses.

Background

The North Eastern Education and Library Board has warned that “many schools will be in severe difficulty” following cuts to its budget.

Over £3m is to be axed from NEELB for the 2011/12 financial year, the board has revealed.

And it has labelled Department of Education savings plans as “neither realistic nor viable” at a meeting to discuss the financial position for the education service in the North East.