PRIME MINISTER Rishi Sunak came under fresh pressure after the schools minister said today he had refused to increase funding to overhaul 200 schools a year as chancellor.

Nick Gibb said that the Department for Education (DfE) asked for the amount in 2021, only for Mr Sunak to agree to continue funding for 50 a year.

The government has known about the risk of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac) since at least 2018 when a roof collapsed at a Kent primary school.

Mr Gibb told Sky News: “We put in a bid for 200, but what Rishi agreed to was to continue the rebuilding programme with 50 a year, consistent with what we’d been doing since we came into office.

“Of course we put in a bid for 200, but of course the Treasury then has to compare that with all the other priorities from right across Whitehall, from the health service, defence, and so on.”

National Education Union general secretary Daniel Kebede meanwhile slammed Education Secretary Gillian Keegan for claiming that school chiefs, who had not responded to a DfE survey about Raac, should “get off their backsides.”

He said: “It is outrageous of the Education Secretary to lay any responsibility for the Raac crisis at the door of schools.”

The DfE conceded today that just four schools have been rebuilt so far under the programme to overhaul 500 sites by 2030, which Mr Sunak has used in his defence in recent days but claimed it was “on track to deliver that commitment.”

Downing Street insisted it was not the only scheme tasked with fixing schools, saying in total 72 were completed in 2021 and 47 the following year.

It has admitted that hundreds more schools could have issues related to the light-weight material known to have a 30-year lifespan than the 104 that were told to close buildings containing it last Thursday.

Holyrood was made aware of the risks of Raac by the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service last summer, newly released emails have shown.

The service warned of potential “structural collapse” of hospitals, the “prevalence of asbestos in buildings of this age” and the “unknown performance” of the material in a fire.

Correspondence between government and local authority officials from July last year was released under freedom of information laws.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said: “Children are not at school today because of the action the government has failed to take in relation to schools. That is unforgivable.”