Education Secretary Gillian Keegan has been caught on camera, in the middle of the RAAC concrete/crumbling schools crisis, bemoaning the lack of support she has received for doing, in her words, “a f*cking good job”.

She said her actions have come after others – presumably other Education Secretaries – “sat on their arses” and did nothing.

This certainly seems to be true. We know that the Labour government of 1997-2010 had identified a problem with the concrete used to build many schools (and other public buildings) and had started a programme to replace those buildings – but Michael Gove cancelled it when the Coalition government negotiated its way into office in 2010:

Tories have been on the social media, claiming that Building Schools For The Future was slow and corrupt…

… and the veracity of those claims may need to be researched. But it was, at least, there. The Tories replaced it with nothing at all – for eight years.

Evidence that schools were falling apart surfaced in 2013 but nobody did anything about it.

Further evidence turned up in 2018 and, while something was done, it was nothing like enough.

Rishi Sunak was warned about the problem when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and was asked to double the budget for replacing school buildings. Instead, he halved the number of schools being helped:

To hear Sunak defending his decision, one might think he has actually increased the number of schools being helped instead of halving it:

Peter Stefanovic has had a look at the facts, and here they are:

Returning funding to 2010 levels – in 2021, let alone 2023 – still means a real-terms cut in funding due to inflation, and This Writer would certainly suggest that this is the reason the number of schools being rebuilt has been halved.

It’s all symptomatic of the Tory ‘Less is More’ strategy – cut a policy, then bring it back at a lower level than previously and tell the public to be grateful.

Reasons have been put forward for the decision to cut the number of schools being rebuilt in half. Keegan has rubbished them in Parliament but – given what we know – you may wish to ignore what she is saying:

Keegan became Education Secretary in October last year, after Sunak had become prime minister.

And what has she actually done?

Well, she has apologised for her filthy-tongued rant, saying she was frustrated with her interviewer at the time, and adding that guidance for schools on RAAC concrete has only changed since Thursday, when new reports came to light:

She has also said that any work to be done on affected schools was not the responsibility of the Department for Education:

It seems neither of those claims are true, as the following, from a frustrated father, indicates:

https://twitter.com/simonharris_mbd/status/1698684837001822344

And this response to her abrogation of responsibility is damning, too:

Instead, evidence has emerged that, despite having been warned in December 2022 that there was a high risk of school buildings collapsing, Keegan hid the dangers. That was half a year ago:

Instead of tackling this urgent problem, affecting the safety of children across the UK, Keegan spent £34 million giving her own offices a ‘glow up’:

She told Kay Burley of Sky News that she had nothing to do with any such decision…

… but if you can bear to read the Sun article (link above), it seems that, while it was a forerunner’s decision to have the refurbishment, Keegan did sign it off – and in April, after schools had been asked for – and started returning – information about problems with RAAC concrete.

She has – apparently – sent out a questionnaire to all bodies responsible for school and college buildings… but that didn’t happen until 8.02pm on the day before term began again:

Keegan does seem to have been accurate about one thing:

Meanwhile, Rishi Sunak (remember him?) has called for calm, saying only a minority of schools are affected…

… and while we should note down the time and date of that claim for future reference, we should also understand that Sunak has apparently failed to acknowledge related issues:

To summarise:

Before Gillian Keegan took over as Education Secretary, Tory governments since 2010:

• Cancelled a programme to rebuild crumbling schools.
• Ignored evidence that schools were becoming dangerous and rebuilding work was vital.
• After they allowed the situation in one school to become so bad that its roof collapsed – in other words, after ignoring a problem until a disaster happened – they agreed to provide just one-quarter of the money needed to rebuild the necessary number of schools per year.
• And after he became Chancellor, Rishi Sunak cut the number of schools being rebuilt in half – to one-eighth of the number required.

After Gillian Keegan took over as Education Secretary, she:

• Allegedly hid evidence of the dangers presented by crumbling schools, in the hope that the issue would not come to light until after a different political party forms a government.
• Actually insisted that local authorities are responsible for school buildings, not the Department for Education – even though local authorities have to seek funding for school refurbishment from central government.
• Signed off a £34 million refurbishment of her own DfE offices in London while denying help to schools that were crying out for it.
• Launched a fact-finding exercise on the number of schools needing urgent help – the night before schools re-opened for the autumn term. Any help they get will therefore disrupt the education of pupils, and
• Suggested that she should be thanked for her actions.

And Keegan calls that a “f*cking good job”?

Please remember what a “f*cking good job” she has done – at threatening your children’s lives – next time you get to vote in a Parliamentary election.

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