There should be a proper tendering procedure for any temporary buildings hired by the Tories while they try to shrug out of doing anything about the schools they have left to fall down.
We need to demand that any procedure be fully-transparent and open to all qualified providers – not the usual cowboy Tory donors.
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Gillian Keegan: she has been out and about with a photographer and wanted to show us the pictures. Oh, and there’s some information about RAAC concrete in schools that may or may not be accurate.
Education Secretary Gillian Keegan has published an update on what she has been doing to resolve the problem of RAAC concrete causing schools to fall apart around our children.
Here it is, as provided on ‘X’. There may be problems with it already…
Throughout the week, I’ve been chairing Gold command meetings on RAAC with our experts, Ministers, officials and operational teams to ensure that every school or college with RAAC gets the support they need.
This Writer is sure that more than one per cent of all schools or colleges have RAAC concrete in them. It was widely used from the 1950s to the 1990s.
This means that it is likely that more than one per cent of all schools or colleges will suffer some form of collapse associated with RAAC concrete in the future. If the Department for Education is claiming that this is not likely to happen, then it is misleading people who are in danger – possibly fatally.
I state that merely as an observation. It will be for others to take action.
On Thursday, I visited a school in Essex to see first-hand how schools like theirs are working to minimise the disruption to education from RAAC.
I also chaired two roundtable discussions with councillors and MPs to see how we could further support sites impacted in Essex.
Note that she doesn’t actually say what these schools have done. Is it really that embarrassing for the DfE?
Here’s where you can find more words about what the government is doing.
Set them against any facts you know and see if they match up!
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Nick Gibb: is it really ‘the system’ that can’t cope with rebuilding more than 50 schools per year, or Tory penny-pinching?
Schools Minister Nick Gibb has tried to whitewash the Tory repair programme with an outrageous lie that 50 schools per year is as much as the system can cope with:
#KayBurley – Rishi Sunak was told that we need to rebuild 400 schools, but he cut that down to 50 in 2021… is that right or not?
Nick Gibb – "We put in a bid for 200… 50 school buildings a year is what the system can cope with… we are the government.." #BBCBreakfastpic.twitter.com/RRj9rMqFaz
The system – however he may wish to describe it – was coping with 100 schools a year before current prime minister Rishi Sunak (as Chancellor at the time) stuck his oar in.
He fanfared a decision to “restore” funding for schools to their 2010 level – meaning it had been slashed much further by previous chancellors.
It means the amount available in 2021, when he made the announcement, was much less in real terms than in 2010, due to inflation – and that was before the inflation crisis that engulfed the UK in 2022.
And it was the amount available for all school-related spending, not just for repairs to schools that were built using RAAC concrete and are now falling down around pupils’ ears.
“The system” can cope with much more school rebuilding work. It is the Conservative government that is hindering it.
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Gillian Keegan: she reckons she has done a ‘f*cking good job’. Your opinion on what has been ‘f*cked’ may differ.
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.
You have not done a “f*cking” good job.
You stripped money from crumbling schools and handed it to private boarding schools & diverted cash into your free school fetish.
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:
The Tories cancelled the school refurbishment programme started by Gordon Brown.
They diverted £millions of taxpayers’ money into private boarding school funding instead.
Tories have been on the social media, claiming that Building Schools For The Future was slow and corrupt…
Like most @UKLabour policies and projects, Building Schools for the Future ran over time, way over budget and was a huge PFI scheme that made made many friends of Labour, very rich.
No off the shelf designs, no economies of scale – just lots of people riding the gravy train 🚂 https://t.co/PyZeubZwMe
… 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.
The Tories are acting like crumbling schools is a new thing, a surprise.
Here is one of my own tweets, now more than 10 years old, pointing out that schools were crumbling in 2013.
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:
The schools building crisis “made simple”…the former top official at the Department for Education told me on @BBCr4today that after a school roof collapsed in 2018 officials concluded that there was a need to re-build 3-400/year
The Treasury agreed to pay to re-build 100 schools a year not 3-400 as requested by education ministers. So the Department for Education tried again & proposed doubling the number of schools to be re-built each year – from 100 to 200.
That’s why Labour can claim that the school building crisis is the fault of @RishiSunak & the Prime Minister can claim it's "utterly wrong" to blame him for the failure to tackle RAAC in schools earlier.
To hear Sunak defending his decision, one might think he has actually increased the number of schools being helped instead of halving it:
Q: The former permanent Secretary, at DfE, has said that when they wanted to put more money into repairing schools… you didn't allow that to go ahead.. are you to blame for what's happened & do you want to apologise?
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:
Ben Bradshaw – "When the Prime Minister slashed the schools repair budget… how big a factor in that decision was the fact he nor most of the Conservative cabinet actually use state schools for their own children?" pic.twitter.com/51mHMpjGio
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:
I’m sorry for my off the cuff remark and choice language earlier.
I know parents are concerned. I’ve been working non-stop to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.
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:
Hi Gillian Keegan. As Education Secretary, you were just caught on camera saying that you were upset about not being thanked for doing ‘a f****** good job’ during the RAAC crisis in schools, and so I would like to thank you personally.
THANK YOU for being in charge of a DfE who…
— Simon Harris – Man Behaving Dadly (THAT’S DADLY) (@simonharris_mbd) September 4, 2023
And this response to her abrogation of responsibility is damning, too:
Yes, local authorities do have responsibility for buildings… and they have been warning you for FIVE YEARS! 🤦🏻♀️😡 pic.twitter.com/uG2kJJzv8u
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:
"A reliable source has informed us that in early February, two months after the risk level was raised to high, Education Secretary Gillian Keegan remarked, ‘We just need to keep the lid on this for two years and then it’s someone else’s problem.’" https://t.co/Na3DrI4fdV
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’:
Gillian Keegan authorised a £34m revamp of her offices in April to provide “improved lighting and a muted colour palette” together with a quiet room and a modernised kitchen just at the time when schools were being asked about concrete problems https://t.co/6KvOzqLVzc
… 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:
You waited until 8.02pm the night before term starts to send this?
Keegan does seem to have been accurate about one thing:
Ten education secretaries over the last ten years have looked on as Britain's schools fall to pieces. That's how much the Tories value our kids' education.
… 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:
At the current rate of school refurbishment it will take 440 years for all schools in the UK to get done. We need them all to be net-zero carbon in less than 30 years time, and most will require refurbishment to get anywhere near that goal. Has no one in government realised that?
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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Hands up if you think the Tories have been gambling with your life: the government has known schools are in danger of collapse for years, but hasn’t devoted enough funds to fixing the problem or enough time to get the work done. Why?
It’s September, and here in the UK – every year – it means “Back to School”. That’s apart from kids whose schools are falling apart because they were built with RAAC concrete, of course.
This Writer woke up to the following tweet:
Government has know since 2018 that 572 schools may have buildings with defective concrete, 65 confirmed and 24 needing immediate action.
Schools will shut.
Just a reminder schools shut from March to September in 2020 due to Covid.
According to the BBC, it means 700,000 school pupils – a little more than six per cent of the total school population – could be in danger because of the dilapidated state into which the Tories have allowed schools to fall.
The National Audit Office (NAO) report says the Department for Education (DfE) has, since 2021, assessed the risk of injury or death from a school building collapse as “very likely and critical”.
The NAO, the UK’s independent public spending watchdog, said risks had not been addressed because of years of underfunding.
It said the deteriorating condition of school buildings was damaging pupil attainment and teacher retention.
Instead of acknowledging the failures, the Tory-run Department for Education has protested that it has been “significantly investing in transforming schools”. Into death traps?
The article went on to quote the claim that £15bn had been allocated to school repairs since 2015, and after 2020, the Department for Education was allocated £3.1bn per year to keep schools safe and operation. But the DfE had requested £4bn, with £7bn per year the “best practice” level.
So the government had allocated less than half the cash needed to restore these schools properly.
This information has all been regurgitated in the news today – although the £3.1bn has been increased to £4bn for reasons not known to This Writer.
Also repeated in today’s stories is the fact that the Tories stopped funding the Building Schools for the Future programme in 2010:
Let’s get back to the length of time during which the Tory government has known about this problem.
If 2018 is indeed the year it was discovered, then the failure to use lockdown time (when pupils were at home) during the Covid-19 pandemic is unforgiveable.
If it was 2021, then the Tories still had many school holiday periods to start building works to fix these problems.
Ah, but they had only put aside less than half the cash needed for it – and by this time, the government was spending huge amounts on the consequences of Brexit.
That brings us to June 28, when I published my initial article about this. We were told that the government was aware of the issue, and that it had been told the amount of cash allocated to solve the problem was not adequate.
It would have been reasonable to expect the government to allocate the necessary funding to this problem so that building work could take place during the summer holidays.
But it seems that has not happened.
And most people probably think this is something that has only just come to light!
Now, the education of hundreds of thousands of school pupils is going to suffer because the Conservative government was too irresponsible to do the right thing at the right time.
I saw a video clip by Maximilien Robespierre, suggesting a plausible reason for this, and I’ll put it to you as a question:
Did the Tories procrastinate about this because they were hoping it would become an issue for a different government after the next general election? Because they were hoping to be able to blame this on the Labour Party?
If so, you need to ask yourself a question that should be of paramount importance when you consider how to vote in that election:
Have the Tories been gambling with the lives of your children, just to save money and win an electoral advantage?
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