More than 100 schools are expected to be completely rebuilt due to the autoclave reinforced concrete (RAAC) crisis, the education secretary has said.
On Wednesday (December 6), the government updated its list of schools and colleges in England that it has identified as containing RAAC. The figure now stands at 231, compared to the 214 declared on October 16.
The update came after further surveys on the school estate to identify the material, which was commonly used in post-war buildings and has been subject to safety warnings since 2018. August generalized school closures were ordered, a few days before the new school year began.
Education Secretary Gillian Keegan told Parliament’s education select committee on Wednesday that there were likely to be only a “few more cases” identified, some of them expected to be in holiday survey settings of Christmas
Last month, the Public Accounts Committee highlighted that there were still 100 places to be selected for the School Reconstruction Program and many of them will be chosen because of their problems with RAAC. Around 1,200 schools were being considered for the Department for Education (DfE) programme.
Education committee chair Robin Walker asked how many schools affected by RAAC would need to be completely rebuilt.
Keegan said the number was still being worked out. “We have a commitment from the Treasury that we will do what we have to do to rebuild if there are more than 100 places and I anticipate it will probably be more.
“We’re going to do the right thing, we’re going to make the hard decisions, we’re not going to shy away and we’re going to work with schools to keep kids in face-to-face education and also to make sure we’re working fairly with them. they get what they need in the long run.”
DfE permanent secretary Susan Acland-Hood explained that around 110 of the identified schools have put in place mitigation measures such as hardwood or steel beams.
When asked by Labor MP Ian Mearns why schools were closed this year instead of taking action in 2018 after RAAC became a known problem in Whitehall, Keegan defended the government’s approach.
“We took action in 2018. In 2018, we updated the guidance for schools and responsible bodies because we had an incident in Kent and we took action and said that all responsible bodies needed to take action on the RAAC because of the findings from both. the NHS and the DfE,” he said.
“The big difference [between departments] it is the number of buildings, but also who is responsible for the buildings. The NHS is responsible for its buildings. They have a couple of hundred of them and they have estate management teams to do it. We are not responsible for buildings and we have 64,000 buildings […] less than 7-8,000 responsible entities”.
Asked about the problems arising from three schools built by defunct contractor Caledonian Modular which are due to be demolished due to defects, Acland-Hood rejected a suggestion that there was a problem with modular construction beyond “the way the modules were assembled by the company.” .
