Parents still in dark on concrete crisis as pupils return to school despite ‘thousands more buildings at risk’
Jeremy Hunt say he does not want to ‘scare people unnecessarily’ by speculating on numbers of schools affected
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Your support makes all the difference.Parents are still in the dark as millions of pupils return to school this week despite fears that “thousands” more buildings are at risk of collapse from crumbling concrete.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt on Sunday refused to be drawn on how many buildings were affected as he rejected accusations that government cuts were to blame.
He insisted that the government had acted to close more than 100 schools known to have the potentially dangerous reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) as soon as they were alerted – but ministers are no closer to revealing the full list, despite repeated calls to do so.
It comes as Labour launched a stinging assault on the PM by reviving its controversial attack ads to this time claim the scandal showed Rishi Sunak did not want schools to be safe.
Asked about an estimate that as many as 7,000 schools could be affected, Mr Hunt told the BBC he did not want to “speculate on these numbers” so as to avoid comments that “might scare people unnecessarily”.
Education secretary Gillian Keegan is set to make an emergency statement to MPs when the Commons returns from its summer recess on Monday – while Labour is due to force a vote that would make ministers reveal the full list of locations.
Opposition shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson blamed Tory cuts dating back to 2010 for the problems, and said the “chickens are now coming home to roost”.
But she declined to pledge more money to fix the issue, should Labour come to power at the next election, citing the economic situation.
Labour wants the government to release what it knows about the scale of the problem, with parents still left in the dark about whether their child’s school is affected.
A mother of two from Ilford told The Independent it was “concerning” that her children’s school had not communicated with her over the issue.
“I would have thought they would have sent out something,” she said. Rather than having her fears about the building collapsing allayed, the mother is having to rely on her rough knowledge of the school’s construction history to assess how worried she should be.
“The school is a fairly new building but they still have really old parts remaining,” she said. “I’m not sure. It’s definitely worrying.”
“The government and councils need to do more to reassure parents,” she added: “If there are school closures, then that’s more disruption. Kids have already fallen behind after Covid.”
But another mother with children returning to classes this week, Niyla Akhtar, from east London, said: “I feel OK about my son going back as the school has been inspected and is deemed safe to return. But if it were to close down, I would expect the government to provide an alternative site for education.”
Hoping to capitalise on concerns about the problems, Labour on Sunday relaunched a controversial attack advert targeting Rishi Sunak – claiming he did not want schools to be safe.
The image posted on social media and pushed out to voters on party channels is a reworking of an earlier ad which caused a furore in April when the opposition claimed Mr Sunak did not think sex offenders should go to prison.
Blaming the poor state of the schools estate on government austerity cuts, Ms Phillipson said: “This crisis stems from the Conservatives’ decision to axe Labour’s Building Schools for the Future programme and repeated raids on education capital budgets – chickens are now coming home to roost.
“Using already-allocated money to just make safe school buildings with RAAC is funnelling money away from other necessary work to upgrade schools and remove dangerous asbestos, storing up problems for the future.
“The Conservatives must publish everything they knew about this dangerous concrete and the list of affected schools so that this mess can begin to be fixed.”
One of the first acts of David Cameron’s government in 2010 was to cancel Gordon Brown’s Building Schools for the Future programme, which was meant to renew school buildings.
Asked whether he accepted that decisions to cut back public investment were to blame, chancellor Mr Hunt told the BBC: “No”, though he said the last government had “run out of money” and left the incoming administration with “difficult decisions”.
“The moment we found out there were problems, we’ve acted on them,” he said, insisting that the government would “spend what it takes” to make the schools safe.
Later on Sunday, Treasury sources said there were no plans for additional funding and the money would have to come from the existing budget for building costs, The Guardian reported.
On Sunday, a whistleblower at the Department for Education (DfT) who worked in the private office of Nadhim Zahawi, then education secretary, claimed regular alerts crossed ministers’ desks.
They told the Observer that ministers and special advisers were “trying to get away with spending as little as they could” and that they had seen at least four detailed warnings about “reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete” in the space of a few months in early 2022.
Meanwhile, the i newspaper reported that the DfT was warned four years ago by structural engineers that schools built from RAAC could collapse without warning.
A DfT spokesperson said: “We have been clear since Thursday about the number of schools immediately impacted by RAAC. It is vital that schools are given time to inform parents and consider their next steps, with extensive support from our caseworkers, before the list of affected schools is published. The education secretary will inform parliament next week of the plan to keep parents and the public updated on the issue.
“Fifty-two of the 156 RAAC cases identified already have mitigations in place, and while some of the remaining projects will be more complex, many will range from just a single building on a wider estate, down to a single classroom.
“We are incredibly grateful to school and college leaders for their work with us at pace to make sure that where children are affected, disruption is kept to a minimum, and in the even rarer cases where remote learning is required, it is for a matter of days not weeks.”
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