Today, 29th November 2011, chancellor George Osborne announced in his Autumn Statement: An extra £1.2bn will be made available for UK schools - split between £600m to local authorities to address school placement shortages and a further £600m to help fund 100 new free schools

This builds on funding announcements made earlier this year:

£2bn Priority Schools Building Programme for secondary schools in England and Wales
£800m for City Academies
£500m Basic Need maintenance funding
Furthermore when you factor in the ongoing BSF legacy work (only 160 of 700 confirmed BSF schools have been built), it's easy to see why the UK’s leading schools builders; BAM, Skanksa, Capita Symonds, Carillion, and Graham Construction have already confirmed their presence at the Building Future Education (BFE) event. Can you afford not to be there?

BFE (formally BSEC) is now in its 7th year and takes place at the Business Design Centre in London 9-10 May 2012 and is the UK’s only focussed event for the finance, procurement, design, construction and furnishing of education buildings.

The event will feature over 120 suppliers from architects, consultants, contractors and product suppliers showcasing their products and services to over 3,000 exhibition visitors and conference delegates from local authorities, academies, sponsors, schools, colleges, investors, consortiums and construction and design firms.