More than 100 school buildings with dangerous concrete must be rebuilt
More than 100 schools in England with dangerous concrete will need to have blocks rebuilt or refurbished, the Government has announced.
The Department for Education (DfE) published a final list of 234 schools with reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac) on Thursday.
They include 119 of schools where one or more buildings need to be rebuilt or refurbished through the Government’s School Rebuilding Programme.
A further 110 schools and colleges where the presence of Raac was found to be less extensive will receive a grant to help them remove the concrete.
Hundreds of schools and colleges in England have been identified as having the crumbly concrete in some areas of their buildings since the Government first raised the alarm in August last year about the risk of buildings collapsing.
More than 150,000 pupils attend schools impacted by the concrete crisis.
Schools were told to fully or partially close days before the start of the new academic year in September after part of a school building containing Raac which had been rated as “non-critical” collapsed during the summer holidays.
Raac is a building material used in the latter half of the 20th-century, but is now assessed to be at risk of collapse.
Gillian Keegan, the Education Secretary, said: “Nothing is more important to me than the safety of every child and member of staff in school.
“We will continue to work closely with schools and colleges as we take the next step to permanently remove Raac from affected buildings.”
The DfE has said its Raac identification programme is now complete as all schools and colleges with blocks built in the target era have responded to their questionnaire.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “We welcome this much-needed clarity on the nature of the work to remove Raac from the schools and colleges affected.
“This is an important step, but it is only one step towards solving this crisis and a number of unanswered questions remain.
“Given the severe pressures on the school estate as a whole, we need assurances that this work will be funded wholly through additional capital expenditure and money will not be diverted from other sources.
“There must also be clear timelines set out for when this work is going to be completed.”
Paul Whiteman, general secretary of school leaders’ union the NAHT, said: “This announcement doesn’t contain any new money from the Treasury, but it does set out how those schools currently identified as being affected by Raac will receive the costs they require for the building work needed to fix it. That will be welcome information for those schools.
“However, there is still a concern that we don’t know the full extent of all the schools affected, as not all surveys have been completed successfully.
“And while dealing with Raac is crucial, we really need to see more ambitious investment from the Government in bringing the schools estate up to scratch overall – from Raac, to asbestos, to general disrepair – they need a plan to tackle all school building issues before they become the next big crisis. That can’t happen without more money from the Treasury.”
