Solar panels mean more money for education, MP says

A school will have more money to spend on education thanks to government-funded solar panels, an MP has said.

The government announced in March that it was investing £180m installing solar panels in schools and hospitals across the country.

The first 11 schools have now had them put in - including Whiteknights Primary School in Reading, which is expected to save around £4,500 a year as a result.

"Overall that means less money spent on energy and heating bills [and] more money to for the school to actually spend on students' education," said MP for Earley and Woodley Yuan Yang.

The Labour MP visited the school on Monday, alongside climate minister Kerry McCarthy.

She said she spoke to schoolchildren about climate change and how it should be tackled.

"They wanted to talk about all sorts of things, from saving energy to transport," she said.

"It's often the children who asked the most incitive questions about climate change and the future."

Climate minister Kerry McCarthy said the fact schools could save money on their bills was proof that the transition to green power could directly benefit communities

Great British Energy is a new publicly owned company set up by the Labour government.

Ms Yang said the solar panels, which would continue generating electricity throughout the weekends and school holidays to be sold back to the national grid, were "a really key investment".

"All of this together is part of a diverse energy mix and the more different sources of renewable generation then the more robust - the more secure - an energy system is," she said.

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