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The schools built with concrete that is 'susceptible to failure'

School funding and finance Facilities Government policy Whole-school issues Whole-school issues Health & Safety
More than a third of school buildings in England are past their life expectancy with on-going concerns that hundreds of schools have been built using a lightweight concrete that is "susceptible to failure".

A report from the National Audit Office (NAO, 2023) says that around 700,000 children are being educated in schools requiring major rebuilding or refurbishment work.

The condition of school buildings report confirms what the NAO calls a “significant funding shortfall” which it says has contributed to the “deterioration of the school estate”.

There are 64,000 individual school buildings in England and the report says that 38% (around 24,000) are “beyond their estimated initial design life”. These buildings can normally continue to be used but are more expensive to maintain and run.

The estimated life for school buildings is 60 to 80 years for non-system-built school buildings and 30 to 40 years for system-built blocks, which use materials such as concrete and steel that are assembled and then transported to the site.

This approach was widely used between 1940 and 1980 to construct schools at a faster pace.

The NAO warns that 10,000 buildings constructed before 1940 are still in use as well as 13,800 system-built blocks – almost all of which contain asbestos (including 3,600 where the asbestos could be susceptible to deterioration).

The NAO is particularly concerned about the use of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) – a lightweight form of concrete which is “susceptible to failure” and which was used in many school buildings between the 1950s and mid-1990s.

The Department for Education (DfE) was alerted to potential problems in 2018 after what was described as a "sudden roof collapse" at a school in Kent. Since then, it has focused on 14,900 schools with buildings constructed between 1930 and 1990 and identification work has been completed in around 6,300 of these. The DfE issued a guide to identifying RAAC in 2021. This was updated in December 2022.

As of May this year, the DfE suspects that RAAC could be present in 572 of the 6,300 schools. Of these, 196 investigations have been carried out and RAAC has been confirmed in 65 – of which 24 required immediate action.

In May, the DfE announced that where RAAC is present in schools it would provide funding to ensure that it does not pose an immediate risk. However, the NAO is concerned at the DfE’s slow progress on this issue: “DfE continues to build its understanding of where RAAC is used, including by collating questionnaire responses from schools, but does not currently have the information required to fully manage potential risks.”

In December, the DfE’s annual report identified building collapse as one of six key risks facing the sector, with the risk level being raised to “critical – very likely” and labelled as “worsening”. It stated: “There is a risk of collapse of one or more blocks in some schools which are at or approaching the end of their designed life-expectancy and structural integrity is impaired.”

Earlier this year, the DfE pledged that data showing the condition of school buildings will be published before the end of the summer recess.

The NAO has raised specific concerns about underfunding. The DfE has reported £7bn a year as the best practice level of capital funding to maintain, repair and rebuild the school estate and in 2020 it recommended £5.3bn a year as the capital funding required to maintain schools and “mitigate the most serious risks of building failure”.

However, the Treasury subsequently allocated the DfE an average £3.1bn a year. Between 2016 and 2022, the DfE spent an average £2.3bn a year, the NAO notes.

Its report is clear: “In recent years, funding for school buildings has not matched the amount DfE estimates it needs, contributing to the estate’s deterioration.”

Previous research by the House of Commons Library revealed that overall DfE capital spending has declined by around 37% in cash terms and 50% in real terms between 2009/10 and 2021/22 (Danechi & Long, 2023).

The NAO report’s main recommendation is that the DfE “determines by when, and through what means, it plans to have fully dealt with RAAC as a safety issue across the school estate so that it is no longer a critical risk”.

Elsewhere, an environmental sustainability overview, also published by the NAO this week, finds that while the DfE is responsible for 37% of emissions from public sector buildings, it has not yet set a target to reduce them.

The DfE plans to implement emissions targets for the education sector from 2025, but the NAO finds that its current schemes will not bring it close to achieving the government’s promised 75% reduction.

Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, said: "The DfE has, since 2021, assessed the risk of school building failure or collapse as critical and very likely, but it has not been able to reduce this risk. More widely, it has an ambitious strategy for decarbonising the education estate but no plan for how it will achieve this or how much it is likely to cost.

"The DfE is gathering some of the data it needs to effectively target its resources. It must now use this to improve its understanding of where schools are most at risk so it can balance addressing the most urgent risks while investing enough in maintenance, reducing carbon emissions, and climate change adaptation measures to achieve its objectives and secure longer-term value for money."

Commenting on the NAO’s fundings, Meg Hillier MP, chair of the Committee of Public Accounts in the House of Commons said: “Worryingly, the government does not know how many schools may be unsafe. Since 2017, the DfE has improved its data on the general condition of the school estate, which has helped illustrate a serious deficit in annual funding required to improve schools. After years of firefighting issues, parents need reassurance that the DfE knows where, when and how any risks to their children will be remedied.”

Julie McCulloch, director of policy at the Association of School and College Leaders, added: “This report paints a shocking picture of the government’s neglect of school buildings. The school estate is riddled with a type of concrete that is prone to failure as well as the presence of asbestos in many buildings. Both these issues are a very serious public health risk and require a much greater sense of urgency, action and investment on the part of government.

“It is perfectly clear that the government has made a conscious decision to deprioritise education over the past 14 years and the deterioration of the school estate is one of the results of this mindset alongside the worsening situation across the country of severe teacher shortages.”