Ministers have greenlit six further Building Schools for the Future projects worth a total of £420 million.
Five local authorities are joining the scheme for the first time, bringing the number of councils in the programme to 101. The new entrants are Buckinghamshire, Cornwall, Lincolnshire, Oxfordshire and Sutton.
In addition, Gateshead council has been given permission to begin procurement of its second phase project.
This brings the number of new projects launched in this financial year to 24. Tim Byles, chief executive of delivery agency Partnerships for Schools, described the decision to launch so many schemes in a year as "business as usual."
“The general plan is for a group to join every quarter," he added, but admitted that the forthcoming election raised questions about next quarter's schemes.
The Conservatives, favourites to form the next government, have pointedly refused to guarantee funding for any BSF scheme that has not reached financial close.
Asked what impact this would have on existing schemes, Byles said: "You have to look back at history to work that out. Where a government has made a commitment for a scheme then those are followed through."
But he also noted that the newly-elected Labour government cancelled some NHS projects in the late nineties, and added: "This isn't something that it's helpful for me to speculate about now."