Michael Gove has failed to build a single school – three years after he axed a Labour blueprint to rebuild more than 700 schools.

The Education Secretary sparked uproar in July 2010 when he controversially scrapped Labour’s “wasteful” building programme.

But in an embarrassing blow to Mr Gove, the Sunday Mirror can reveal Mr Gove has failed to finish building work on any of the 221 school projects listed in the programme he set up almost two years ago.

Work has only started on 20 schools – fewer than one in ten of those 221 schools that Mr Gove admits need an urgent revamp. But none have been completed, despite Mr Gove’s boast that he would deliver a “faster” way of building schools.

His botched decision to end Labour’s Building Schools for the Future (BSF) to transform 715 schools triggered a ferocious backlash after Mr Gove mistakenly promised some schools their work would go ahead.

After cancelling Labour’s programme to eventually rebuild every secondary school, Mr Gove had to apologise for an error-strewn list which wrongly led some schools to believe their plans to rebuild their dilapidated buildings had survived the axe.

The Education Secretary now risks fresh anger from parents and teachers over the chaos which has blighted his replacement scheme, called the Priority School Building Programme (PSBP).

Launching his slimmed-down £2 billion scheme in May 2012, Tory Cabinet Minister Mr Gove vowed it would mean a “more efficient, faster, less bureaucratic approach to building schools”.

But his Lib Dem Schools Minister David Laws has confirmed that not a single one of the 221 projects to rebuilding crumbling schools has been finished.

In response to Labour MP Bridget Phillipson about the lack of progress, Mr Laws said the first school would “will open later this year”.

He disclosed work was under way at just 20 schools – fewer than one in ten of those needing urgent building work.

Despite the doubts among teachers and unions, Mr Laws claimed work on all 221 schools in the Priority School Building Programme would be finished by 2017.

Labour seized on Mr Laws’ admission as evidence of the crisis facing the nation’s classrooms which follows an official assessment that Britain needs 250,000 new primary school places by 2015.

Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary Tristram Hunt told the Sunday Mirror: “When is a priority not a priority? When it’s David Cameron and Michael Gove’s school building programme.

“The Tories have created a national primary places crisis – with 250,000 additional places needed by next year. Next month parents will find out if they have got the place at the primary school of their choosing. With a doubling of the number of infant classes of more than 30 pupils, this is going to become a big election issue.”

Architects involved with Mr Gove’s schools projects have disclosed to the Sunday Mirror that orders to build schools more cheaply than under Labour will mean “shoddy, substandard” classrooms.

Photo by Nalini Prasanna

The revelations come after Mr Gove’s journalist wife Sarah Vine boasted how he would be the first Tory Education Secretary to enrol a child in a state-funded secondary school.

The couple’s daughter Beatrice will go Westminster’s Grey Coat Hospital school.

The exclusive girls’ comprehensive is more than five miles from the couple’s west London home, but around the corner from Mr Gove’s office at the Department for Education.

The row over schools comes ahead of National Offer Day on April 16 when parents will find out if they have managed to get their children into the primary school of their choice.

With the shortage of places, education experts fear a growing number of parents will be disappointed.