By Martin Robinson, Chief Reporter Updated: 03:09 EDT, 4 September 2023 Education Secretary Gillian Keegan says she STILL doesn’t know how many RAAC-risk schools need to close when term starts TODAY.
Education Secretary Gillian Keegan admitted today that she does not know how many schools may have to close because of crumbling concrete or how much money will be needed to fix them.Ministers are under pressure to speed up their plans to inspect 450 schools suspected of containing RAAC beams because the current timetable means that they will not all be checked until December.
Councils still don’t know if they’re safe, but tens of thousands of kids are returning to school this week. Ms. Keegan, England’s Education Secretary, told Sky News this morning that it’s possible that the concrete in hundreds of schools around the country is crumbling.
“Most kids are heading back to school today. Many schools are either looking for alternative accommodation, whether through a multi-academy trust or the local authority, or moving to another classroom if they have spare space. However, some schools will have to close because they have quite extensive RAAC (reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete) and we need to put temporary accommodation in place.
More work needs to be done if the problem affects the entire school. Ms. Keegan took a’very cautious approach’ by closing schools days before the start of the new term after incidents over the summer where crumbling concrete ‘failed’ in settings previously classified as non-critical.
On Monday, she finally addressed the public for the first time since the school situation began:
“What happened over the summer is we had three cases,” he said, “not in schools, some not in schools, and some in different jurisdictions.” When the structural engineers visited the sites, they believed there had been a failure, but it was in a non-critical setting. That was fresh data and proof, so I proceeded with extreme caution.
She continued, “I knew that was going to be challenging because, you know, certainly for parents and for teachers, this coming so late in August, but that’s when we got the proof that a panel had failed in a roof that had previously been categorized as non-critical.
Education Secretary Gillian Keegan told BBC Breakfast, “We’ve now increased to eight surveying companies.” Three portable cabin companies are ready to provide temporary accommodation for schools affected by crumbling concrete.
We have contracted with three Portakabin or temporary accommodation companies who have on stock the Portakabins available, and we have a national propping company ready to go in and prop. So normally we wouldn’t do this, the responsible bodies would do it, but to make it much more efficient we’ve centrally taken that on board so that we can a) pay for it and b) make sure that it’s very quickly available.
There has been outrage amongst teachers, parents, and campaign groups about how the scandal has been handled.Arabella Skinner, director of Us For Them, a group that campaigns on children’s issues, said: ‘It is completely unacceptable that it will take a whole term to learn if the buildings children are sitting in are safe.
This collision is emblematic of the disrespect shown to children by successive governments and is a direct result of the panic-inducing communications deployed throughout the pandemic. Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza told the BBC, “I am extremely disappointed and frustrated that there wasn’t a plan in place for this happening; there is a genuine threat to their safety and parents, and the Government has no idea which schools are affected.” While the government may not have been aware that it would occur this week, we were.
Thangam Debbonaire, the shadow leader of the House of Commons, said on Monday that a vote would be held this week to require the government to release a list of buildings affected by the concrete crisis. “Today parents, children, staff up and down the country will be wondering whether it’s their school building that’s at risk, whether their school building is safe for children to learn in,” she said on BBC Radio 4’s Today program.
That way, we can get a better idea of how much it’s going to cost.’ On the other hand, I can’t believe the government waited this long to tell parents the truth, and now that they know, they’re not doing everything they can to rectify it.
She added that Labour shadow ministers have been working on how to repair crumbling public services for months. The crumbly concrete scandal has rumbled on for a week, with West Suffolk Hospital now being warned its main building is ‘likely’ to collapse.
Many public buildings, including schools, hospitals, police stations, and city halls, have been damaged because they were constructed with deteriorating reclaimed wood. There are concerns that the decaying buildings may contain asbestos, which can cause a variety of illnesses including asbestosis and lung cancer. Asbestos exposure kills 5,000 people in the UK each year.
Many engineers rushed to schools yesterday to check out potentially dangerous areas. Up to seven thousand are potentially dangerous.Some students will have to go back to online classes like those offered by Covid starting tomorrow because of the timing of the disaster and the idea that the government has known the full scope of the situation for years. A report based on an April assessment at West Suffolk Hospital stated that there was a “catastrophic” and “likely” risk of the main building collapsing, which would result in “loss of life and/or major injury” and “asbestos and dust inhalation,” and it recommended that workers be provided with FFP3 respiration masks for use in such an event.
The government has promised to replace seven of the worst affected hospitals in England by 2030, and structural engineer and Institution president Matt Byatt told the Sunday Times, “There are two real risk-to-life elements to this: if RAAC collapses it puts life in danger in an instantaneous manner, and asbestos can be deadly if it is inhaled.” Building collapses can cause disruptions in this system and release toxic fibers into the environment.
Asbestosis and lung cancer are just two of the illnesses that these can bring on. However, it is estimated that over 10,000 school-related deaths in the previous 40 years have been caused by asbestos in schools or school buildings. John Wallace, managing director of the Ridgemont construction and real estate legal business, told the publication, “Asbestos in schools presents a significant complicating factor in remediating issues relating to RAAC.” “Asbestos is extremely dangerous if it is disturbed.
‘Parks Primary in Leicester has already seen the effects of both RAAC and asbestos, with a ‘significant percentage’ of the school being forced to close in June.
The concrete scandal: how and when did evidence surface? Lightweight RAAC construction was popular from the 1950s to the mid-1990s; in 1995, The Times reported that the first warnings about RAAC cracking in roofs had been issued; in 2018, the Department for Education (DfE) recognized RAAC as a potential problem; in June 2023, the National Audit Office (NAO) reported on the issue; in the summer of that year, Schools Minister Nick Gibb claimed that new evidence had emerged; on August 31, 2023, parents were informed that some schools
‘In June we were told we had Raac across the whole of our school and it was in a critical condition, which meant that we had to close a large proportion of our school, leaving only open the reception class and two Year 1 classes and two Year 2 classes,’ said headteacher Caroline Evans to Channel 4 News. Evans relocated her 485 students to an office building and a children’s center while an older school building, which had’subsidence too,’ was demolished.
Hundreds of schools are in a mad dash to fix the problems caused by the collapse of a beam that was thought to be safe just before the start of the new school year, and the Government is under increasing pressure to act swiftly and publish a full list of those schools.
Yesterday, the Chancellor of the United Kingdom, Jeremy Hunt, said on Sky News’ Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips that the government would “do what it takes to keep children safe,” including “prioritizing spending money to sort out these problems where that needs to happen,” in reference to the RAAC and the wider asbestos issue.
We want to make sure that every child is safe, therefore since that occurrence, a massive initiative has been working through the RAAC/asbestos problem in the country’s 22,000 schools. essential that all costs are covered by government, not this middle ground where school leaders don’t know and can’t trust Government guidance on what costs will be incurred by their school.’ He downplayed worries that thousands of buildings across the public sector could be affected and fears that students could be doomed to return to lockdown-style online teaching.
Despite his assurances, he would not commit to provide school principals with additional funds to pay for temporary classrooms.
“It is essential that all costs are covered by government, not this halfway house where school leaders are uncertain of and unable to trust Government guidance as to what costs will be incurred by their school,” said Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union. Education Secretary Gillian Keegan also came under fire for avoiding interviews on Sunday in favor of a “bizarre” information video backed by cheesy music.
Lightweight RAAC, also known as ‘Aero bar’ concrete, was widely used in the UK for these applications from the mid-1950s until the 1990s. In May, a survey was sent to school principals asking if their buildings contained RAAC; however, only about half of the 14,700 schools considered to be at risk responded.
In guidance published by the Department of Education on Thursday, when the issue first surfaced, it was suggested that students and teachers temporarily relocate to nearby schools, community centers, or a “empty local office building” for the “first few weeks” while structural supports are installed to mitigate the risk of collapse. Officials have allocated £6 million for 600 inspections by the end of 2023.
Engineers have warned that the problem could be far wider, with hospitals, prisons, courts, and offices potentially at risk due to the use of Raac up until the mid-1990s.On Thursday, the agency said it had contacted 104 more schools after 52 of the 156 educational settings containing the concrete took protective steps so far this year.
Safety concerns are “just the tip of the iceberg of a failing school estate,” Dame Meg Hillier, chairwoman of the public accounts committee, said on Friday. Harrow Crown Court in North West London was closed for the foreseeable future last month after RAAC was discovered during improvements.
Moreover, RAAC was discovered in six judicial system buildings, prompting an investigation into whether or not the material was used in the construction of any correctional facilities. In the meantime, the Department of Defense has inspected numerous military bases.
In a study released in April of 2020, the Collaborative Reporting for Safer Structures advised its members to ‘urgently’ determine if their buildings had the substance.
According to the research, RAAC may be found in a “wide range” of public and private buildings, while it is “primarily” employed in places like businesses and schools.
Concerns about the safety of RAAC roof planks were reportedly voiced in the 1990s and early 2000s. The issue was first brought to the attention of John Major’s Conservative Government in public buildings in 1995, and it was brought up with the school’s minister once again in 2018 after the roof of a school in Kent suddenly collapsed.
Is the school where YOUR kid goes closing? Fears that concrete could unexpectedly collapse have prompted more than 100 schools and institutions in England to either partially or completely close their facilities. Thousands of students are going to have a rough start to the new school year since the government won’t release the names of the 104 schools that have been forced to close their doors.
Critics have warned the problem may be much more widespread and have called ministers to “come clean” about the scope of the problems with reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RA
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