THE state of Scotland's schools is improving, with fewer buildings in a "poor" state than a year ago, according to a Scottish Government report.
This year's survey of the schools estate looked at 2,704 buildings across Scotland and found 15 per cent were given a good rating, compared with 14 per cent last year.
The number rated "poor" fell from 31 per cent last year to 26 per cent, but the
proportion remaining in a "bad" condition stayed at 5 per cent.
The figures have been slowly improving since a survey in 2004, which found just under half of schools were in a state of disrepair.
However, opposition parties claimed no new buildings had been initiated since the SNP came to power.
Rhona Brankin, Labour's education spokeswoman, said only projects planned by the previous Labour-Lib Dem administration had been put into action.
She demanded the Scottish Government act more swiftly to improve the crumbling school estate. She said: "All of these new schools were initiated under the previous government. It's evidence there needs to be more work and more schools getting on the list for being rebuilt.
"They still haven't come up with their detailed plans for the Scottish Futures Trust," she said. "They are now saying a not-for-profit distribution model will be the basis – but that's a PPP (public private partnership] model."
However, the Scottish Government was adamant it had invested in new schools.
Fiona Hyslop, the education secretary, said 115 school building projects were completed in the last financial year.
She said 35,000 more children across Scotland would be getting lessons in modern, state-of-the-art classrooms already. She added: "Today's figures show we are well on track to meeting our commitment of lifting over 100,000 school pupils out of poor-quality school buildings and classrooms by 2011."
Ms Hyslop said the SNP administration was matching its predecessor's school building programme "brick for brick". She added: "Currently, there is more than £2 billion of committed investment in Scotland's schools.
"Since May last year, this government has signed off funding for seven major local-authority projects, with a further four projects in the pipeline, which will take the total to over 50 schools."
The Scottish Government expects 250 new schools to be built, funded or under construction by the end of this parliament.
The statistics also showed that £101 million was spent last year on PPP payments.
The full article contains 413 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
