Labour’s shadow education secretary has called for the government to publish a full list of schools being forced to close because of fears over the safety of their buildings.
It comes after the government announced school buildings in England made with a certain type of concrete prone to collapse will be closed immediately.
Around 104 schools or “settings” are set to be disrupted – on top of 50 that have already been affected this year.
However, the government has refused to publicly reveal the facilities, which have buildings constructed with the material Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete – known as RAAC.
It is the same type of concrete that has been found in some hospitals that have been deemed to be unsafe, prompting Health Secretary Steve Barclay to fast-track them into the government’s hospitals-building programme.
Labour’s shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson
Labour’s shadow education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, says the government should publish a full list of impacted facilities and “come clean with parents and set out the full scale of the challenge that we’re facing”.
“They are still not being upfront about it,” she said.
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“They should publish that full list, come clean to parents and make sure that all our children can avoid this kind of disruption.
“They’ve already faced so much lost learning [as a result of COVID], this has to be different.”
‘Could be the tip of the iceberg’
Critics, meanwhile, have warned the problems with RAAC could be even wider than so far outlined, with the Unison union’s head of education, Mike Short, warning the issue could “just be the tip of the iceberg”.
The Department for Education (DfE) have insisted that the vast majority of schools and colleges “will be unaffected” and that the issue is “isolated” to the 156 schools identified as having buildings containing RAAC.
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‘Most parents should not be worried’
The DfE said the majority of the school sites would remain open for face-to-face learning and only specific parts of buildings closed where RAAC is used.
However, the department has said a “minority” will need to “either fully or partially relocate” to alternative accommodation such as nearby schools, community centres or “empty local office buildings” while safety measures are installed.
Schools have also been advised that pandemic-style remote education should only be considered as a “last resort and for a short period”.
According to guidance from the DfE, funding will only be provided for works that are “capital funded” and schools will have to pay for rental costs for emergency or temporary accommodation.
‘Safety-first approach’
“We’re taking a very safety-first approach and we’re really being cautious here,” said Education Secretary Gillian Keegan.
“The first thing we’ll do is we’ll identify where the RAAC is, so some children will be moved to a different part of the building, some of the buildings will be propped up, so the roofs will be propped up, some of them will be having temporary classrooms,” she said.
Ms Keegan urged schools to get in touch with DfE if they were concerned, but added: “If you don’t hear then don’t worry about it – this is something that is isolated to those 156 schools.”
She said “at some point” the department would produce a list of all the schools that had been affected.
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Paul Whiteman, general secretary of school leaders’ union NAHT, described the news as “shocking”, but added: “Sadly it is not hugely surprising.”
“What we are seeing here are the very real consequences of a decade of swingeing cuts to spending on school buildings,” he said.
“The government is right to put the safety of pupils and staff first – if the safety of buildings cannot be guaranteed, there is no choice but to close them so urgent building work can take place.
“But there is no escaping the fact that the timing of this couldn’t be worse, with children due to return from the summer holidays next week.”
Kevin Bentley, senior vice-chairman of the Local Government Association, said the timing of the announcement meant schools and councils had been left with “very little time to make urgent rearrangements and minimise disruption to classroom learning”.
He called on the government to urgently set up a task force to tackle the issue and to provide councils with further funding and technical expertise to repair or replace buildings with RAAC.
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Some hospitals deemed ‘unsafe’ because of RAAC
The department said the government has been aware of RAAC in public sector buildings since 1994 but the issue came to light in 2018, when a roof collapsed at a Kent school.
That year the DfE published guidance for schools stating the need to have “adequate contingencies” in the event of evacuations caused by concerns over the use of RAAC.
In June this year, the National Audit Office said a school collapse in England that causes death or injury was “very likely” – but that the government did not have sufficient information to manage “critical” risks to the safety of pupils and staff.
Around 24,000 school buildings – more than a third of the total number in England – are beyond their estimated design lifespan – with school leaders branding the scale of building safety issues “shocking”.
Questions were also raised about the state of UK hospitals after Mr Barclay said that five new sites would be added to the government’s programme to build 40 new hospitals because the presence of RAAC made them unsafe to operate “beyond 2030”.
Five new sites – Airedale General in Keighley, Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn, Hinchingbrooke near Huntingdon, Leighton Hospital in Cheshire and Frimley Park in Surrey – were added to the programme as a priority.
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