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School buildings: ‘Absolute catastrophe averted through sheer luck’

Facilities School funding and finance Whole-school issues Legislation and guidance Government policy Health & Safety
School buildings in England have deteriorated to the point where 700,000 pupils are learning in a school that needs major rebuilding or refurbishment.
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A damning report from the House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts has heavily criticised the Department for Education (DfE), which it concludes “does not have a good enough understanding of safety risks across school buildings for it to fully quantify and mitigate these risks and keep children and staff in schools safe”.

The report continues: “This includes an understanding of how reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC), which may lead to a sudden building collapse, has been used alongside asbestos, which we have raised as a concern for several years.”

Chair of the committee Dame Meg Hillier MP said this week that images of collapsed classroom ceilings which have been circulating in recent months are “chilling reminders of absolute catastrophe averted through sheer luck”.

MPs on the committee said that the DfE’s “lack of basic information” about RAAC in schools was “shocking and disappointing”.

This includes DfE officials being unable to provide information on how many specialist RAAC surveys were outstanding, how many temporary classrooms had been provided to affected schools, or when RAAC issues would be addressed.

The report states: “DfE still has incomplete knowledge on the number and condition of schools with RAAC, with questions about the reliability of some of its information.”

When the RAAC crisis hit national media headlines in September. At the time, there were suggestions that the situation would be resolved in weeks. However, the report states that “some cases are too complicated to be dealt with in this timeframe and that some schools will not even be identified as having RAAC until later” – a situation the DfE is aware of.

Further delays have been caused due to concerns about potential “false positives” in the school questionnaire responses as well as the need to conduct sample checks in schools that say they do not have RAAC. It takes a number of weeks to conduct more specialist surveys and experts who can help identify and manage RAAC are “in short supply”.

The report urges the DfE to “urgently assess the risks of inaccuracies within RAAC questionnaire returns and specialist surveys”.

The latest DfE update was published on October 19 and tells us that RAAC has been identified in 214 schools. DfE advice to schools is to avoid using areas where RAAC has been identified “regardless of any assessment of its structural condition”.

The MPs point out that the Department of Health and Social Care has established a £685m fund to 2024/25 to mitigate RAAC and has committed to remove RAAC from the NHS estate by 2035.

“The DfE has made no such financial or practical commitments,” the report states, adding that the DfE should “make clear when and how it plans to have eradicated RAAC from the school estate” and “re-examine its process for funding temporary mitigation measures”.

On asbestos, the report also raises concerns. As of July 2023, the DfE is still “unsighted” on asbestos in more than 4% of schools – this is progress from 7% in May 2022, but still represents almost 1,000 schools.

And of course, both RAAC and asbestos can be present in the same building, complicating any works to tackle the issues.

MPs on the committee are now calling for the government to consider a package of support for schools in poor condition that cannot yet be fixed.

This is because the government’s School Rebuilding Programme (SRP) is behind schedule and, at any rate, will not go far enough.

In the 2020 Spending Review, the DfE asked for funding to rebuild or refurbish 200 schools a year, but only received Treasury funding for 50 a year (at cost of £1.3bn a year). The DfE announced the SRP in June 2020. By March 2023, it had delivered one project compared with a forecast four and awarded 24 contracts compared with a forecast 83.

The DfE told the committee that it will not be able to catch-up on projects already behind schedule, but “is confident” it will stay on track for upcoming projects.

MPs report that so far the DfE has considered SRP upgrades to 1,200 schools in the most need with safety issues or in poor condition, which includes all manner of issues such as problems with roofs, windows or heating systems.

However, just 500 schools in total will be selected for the SRP over 10 years and many of the 100 schools still to be chosen will now be selected due to serious RAAC issues rather than other longer-term problems.

The report states: “As such, many other schools will therefore not get on to the SRP, even though longer-term assessments of their poor condition would lead to a conclusion that they should be rebuilt.”

The DfE has also committed £1.8bn of capital funding for the current financial year 2023/24, which is intended for maintenance and repairs to improve the condition of school buildings. However, the report also finds that “a proportion of schools in most need do not apply for, or are unaware of, the maintenance and repair funding that is available to them”.

The report says that an estimated 700,000 pupils attend the 1,200 schools that are being considered for the SRP. It adds: “Unacceptable numbers of pupils are learning in poorly maintained or potentially unsafe buildings. The quality of school buildings has an impact on pupils’ learning experience, and ultimately on attainment levels and teacher retention.”

It recommends: “Within the next year, DfE should develop a package of support and good practice to help those responsible for mitigating the negative impact on pupils and teachers of schools that are in poor condition but cannot yet be fixed.”

Delays to the SRP have been blamed on price inflation and other market conditions making it difficult to find contractors. The report adds: “We have seen how changes in the external environment, such as movements in inflation rates, may affect programmes and create complexities. These factors may mean a programme can no longer achieve its intended outcomes, or it is too costly to do so.”

Either way, the report says that the SRP “only touches the surface of problems across the school estate”.

It adds: “DfE must do more to mitigate critical safety and value for money concerns, and then demonstrate that it has clear plans to address the scale of challenge and uncertainty it faces in the coming years.”

Dame Meg Hillier MP said: “A significant proportion of children in this country are learning in dilapidated or unsafe buildings. This is clearly beyond unacceptable, but overcoming the consequences of this deficit of long-term infrastructure planning will not be easy.

“The SRP was already struggling to stay on track, and DfE lacked a mechanism to direct funding to regions which need it most. It risks being blown further off course by concerns over RAAC and many schools in dire need of help will not receive it as a result.

“The images of classroom ceilings collapsed onto empty school desks released in recent months are not just searing indictments of a deteriorating school estate. They are chilling reminders of absolute catastrophe averted through sheer luck. Given the poor condition of so many of these buildings, the government’s prime challenge now is to keep the safety of children and staff absolutely paramount.”

Commenting on the findings, Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “The concerns over the government’s handling of the RAAC crisis chime with what we are hearing. It appears to be taking an eternity to put in place remedial measures – such as temporary classrooms and support structures – let alone any plans to rebuild or refurbish buildings affected by RAAC. In the meantime, despite the best efforts of schools to minimise disruption, the situation continues to be extremely difficult.

“We are gravely concerned that when the government eventually gets around to permanent solutions for affected schools it will do so at the expense of other schools that desperately need upgrading instead of taking the action that is patently necessary to substantially improve capital funding in general.

“It is the failure to invest in the school estate over the past 13 years which has left us with a situation in which many school buildings are falling apart and are still riddled with asbestos.” 

As of January 2023, there are 21,600 state schools in England educating 8.4 million children with around 64,000 buildings.

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